Gambit
by ilexx
Summary: Chapter 83 is up.
1. Prologue

Post season 5.

Don't owe any of the characters, and no, I am not making any money with them.

**Gambit**

Prologue

The enormous spaceship exited slipstream and came to a halt shuddering.

The young ensign at the helm of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ threw a quick glance over to her captain, who was still firmly holding on to his console, the knuckles of his hands white from the strong grip on it, his legs spread apart for a more secure footing. The less experienced – or less fortunate – of the crew on Command Deck were picking themselves up from the floor, dusting off supposed particles from their uniforms and helping each other along as they scrambled to their feet.

„I'm sorry, Sir," the ensign apologized with an embarrassed air.

„Never mind, Miss Perrault, the first slipstream ride at the helm of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ is never easy," the captain calmly replied. „Everybody on board has to start learning sometime, and today is as good a time as any. One isn't born a slipstream pilot, you know?"

„Actually, there **is** one," a voice dryly commented on his remark, a voice that seem to come directly from behind the polished wall panel next to the main screen on the bridge.

Within a second the captain reached the panel and pulled it down, revealing an unruly mop of blond hair and a pair of blue eyes full of reproach.

„Mr Harper!" The captain's tone was one of surprise... and annoyment. „Mind telling me what you are doing buried in my ship's entrails?"

„Keeping her together, if you don't mind. And quietly asking myself why you aren't waiting for our born slipstream pilot before starting with the flying training of the new recruits. This insane rush through slipstream has blocked two of the main exotic matter converters, so I decided to look them up." Seamus Zelasny Harper, chief engineer of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ was launching himself all ahead full into yet another one of his usually rather long technical explanations. Also as usual, Captain Dylan Hunt, commanding officer of the said vessel, Commodore of the High Guard fleet and self admitted technical amateur at best, was rapidly loosing his patience while confronted with a sheer interminable flow of loudly voiced engineering details.

„... that was no longer able to process the security backup files, which I fixed. And lucky for you I did so, because during this last jump your precious Ms ‚Not born a slipstream pilot' Perrault, in spite of her otherwise remarkable attributes," and here Harper shot an admirative glance towards the ensign's indeed lovely back, „also managed to disrupt three more conduits, thereby almost creating a meltdown with the hydroalanium transformator. If I hadn't been there, it could easily have blown up half the command center."

„Oh!" The captain looked down at the younger man in a somewhat sheepish way.

„Yes, oh!" the engineer concluded. „Dylan, as much as I admire your skills and everything, those kids are really, really green. And frankly, Beka is sooo much better suited to guide them through these first steps of slipstreaming. Don't you agree?" Harper added quite bluntly. Silence descended on Command, while the young man stood in front of Dylan with his back turned towards the other people present on deck. Blissfully unaware of the aghast looks the mostly new crew members were throwing at them, he suddently noticed Dylan's eyes close to slits only moments before he felt the captain's hand painfully squeezing his shoulder.

„Mr Harper, walk with me," the tall man towering above him suggested in an even, inflexible tone.

„What, now? What?" the engineer protested, „What did I say?"

„Walk with me, Mr Harper," the captain urged him anew, firmly pushing him towards the door.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Dylan rushed Harper through the corridor towards the captain's office at a mad pace.

„Hey, slow down, will ya?" the shorter man complained, „one might think there is a crowd of Magog coming after us."

„Not one more word, Harper," Dylan hissed through his teeth, shooting a warning glance at the engineer. Outraged by the rude behaviour, Harper opened his mouth in protest, but another look at Dylan's grinding jaws made him rethink his intentions, and so they reached their luckily nearby set destination in silence.

The doors, however, had barely closed behind them, when all of a sudden the older man seemed to simply explode in an outburst of pure, hot rage.

„Andromeda, privacy mode engaged." And without waiting for his order to be confirmed: „Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Harper could only stare at him wide-eyed.

„**I** am the captain, **you** are a senior officer, as **is** Beka; **they**," he gestured towards the closed doors, that separated them from other crew memberes, „are new recruits. How dare you discuss my decisions – or for that matter Beka's absence – in front of them?"

„Sheesh, boss, I wasn't thinking..."

„No, Mr Harper, you quite obviously weren't thinking..." And from then on, on it went for the better part of the following 10 minutes. Protocole, standard procedure, regulations, military discipline rules were thrown at Harper's head in an uncontrolled, breathless shower of angrily uttered words. The engineer could only stand there and watch Dylan pacing back and forth as he continued his ranting, powerless to stop the man, who – for that matter – seemed himself rather powerless to get a grip on his temper.

„A fallen Commonwealth, the Abyss, Magog, Nietzscheans, collectors, Seefra... and me, right in the middle of this madness, trying for six years to make some sense of it while running a... a kindergarden of precocious genial individualists of which every single one could pose a threat to an entire galaxy all by himself. I've had it, Harper, I am sick and tired of it!" Dylan's voice, only a furious hiss at first, was getting louder sentence by sentence.

„The minute I let you out of my sight, you're off starting some genial advanced scientific experiment threatening the boundaries of time and space, while falling for some scheme set up by yet another gorgeous babe hired by some lunatic to either capture, torture or kill you, hereby also exposing yourself to all kind of dangers your – forgive me for stating the obvious – not very stable immune system is not up to. In addition to that, while doing so you never fail to let your mouth run loose on all kind of topics, without giving it a single thought. Would it kill you to just shut up every once in while?"

Harper looked offended.

„Why, no, of course not. It's just that back in the days before **we** rescued **you**, I didn't use to say much. And then Rev began to teach me, how..."

„Ah, yes, Rev!" Dylan interrupted him. „Mr ‚Let's make things better by talking to me about them' himself, provided of course he sticks around for long enough for one to do so, something he seems rather reluctant to do lately. Yes, I know, he's got planets to guard, peoples to save, a Way to find, the universe to take care of, and whenever things go wrong, there is always the possibility to call some friends, like say for instance the crew of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, to sort it out, while he can go on being pacifistic and pure and meditative."

„You make it sound like he abandoned us for some selfish reasons. That is not true, you know," Harper fell in, in a futile attempt to defend his absent friend. „Besides, we do have Trance..."

Again, Dylan prevented him from going on.

„But of course, you're right. We do have Trance, Trance with her little mysteries on the left, the bigger ones on the right, some in front of us, some behind us and – not to forget – all the other ones in between. You sort one mystery out, you can be sure that there will be two more to pop up right in front of you. And don't you start complaining, because if you do she goes tesseracting, or supernova or whatever, all the while she reassures you with this sweet little voice of hers: ‚Come on, Dylan, you can do it, you're Paradine – and no, I won't tell, what that means, you'll find out yourself, and if you don't, or make mistakes and kill someone or yourself in the process, no need to worry, because, you see, there are so many universes and possibilities and variations, and I can mess around with all of them as I please'. Ifthat ain't reassuring...?"

„Well, she messed around quite successfully, didn't she, Dylan? I mean, I can understand, that she is sometimes annoying, that we all are, but things turned out fine in the end, and frankly, although you sound right now as if you're sorry to ever have met anyone of us, I doubt it that you could have pulled it of without us." Meanwhile Harper sounded downright hurt. „Look, Dylan, even Rhade..."

„Now that you mentioned him..." Harper could hardly refrain from cursing himself out loud, seeing that throwing in Rhade's name only set Dylan off on yet another round of bashing. Finally, it ended after a quick run through the former lieutenant commander's and present Terrazed governor's drinking and mating habits along with a short characterization of his Nietzschean peculiarities that Captain Hunt had found interferring with their common goals in the past.

By that time, Harper resigned himself to simply glare at him, having figured out by now that, whatever bothered Dylan, it didn't have anything to do with him or Rev or Trance or the past. And as the captain came to a halt behind his desk, silence settled in between the two men. Wearily rubbing a hand across his face, the older one just sighed loudly and then seemed to finally come to a conclusion. "That's it, I've had it!" he then muttered. Straightening himself to stand as tall as he possibly could, yet avoiding to look into the engineer's eyes, he simply strode by him, throwing him a casual "I'll be in my quarters!" as he passed him by on the way out of his office.

Still staring into the space left vacant by Dylan's frame, Harper cleared his throat.

„Rommie, locate Beka for me, please." There was no response. „Rommie," he began again, but then remembered that Dylan had engaged privacy mode upon entering his office. „Andromeda," Harper requested, „privacy mode disengaged, authorization lieutenant commander Seamus Harper."

„Privacy mode disengaged," he heard the ship's pleasant voice responding to his order. A fraction of a second later, the Andromeda's holographic persona materialized in front of him. „Harper!" she exclaimed, a friendly smile on her beautiful face. „What can I do for you?" A small frown appeared between her brows as she took a closer look at him. „Harper, what happened? You look like something's bothering you."

„I need to talk to Beka, Romdoll, can you locate her for me?"

„Actually, I... can't?" the ship replied, the puzzled tone of her voice matching the look on Harper's face.

„What do you mean, you can't?"

„Well, Captain Valentine's vacation ended 48 hours ago. She seems to have reported in after that, but then Captain Hunt cleared her and the _Maru_ for a not nearer specified mission, and they left yesterday."

„That's funny," Harper stated thoughtfully, „because you see, I clearly remembered Beka to be back around this time, yet when I asked Dylan, he told me that she had applied for a three-, not a two-week leave. When I checked on her whereabouts yesterday, however, I found out that she had been back around the time I was expecting her originally. I found it strange that she hadn't come to say hello, but then I thought her busy. I was on my way to see her, yet with all those new people on board, something just kept coming up, and then this morning Dylan just scheduled slipstream training. It didn't go smoothly, as you know," Rommie silently acknowledged his statement by vigurously pressing her lips together, "and I found out that Dylan was actually the one supervising the whoile damn thing instead of Beka. Now, I believed this to be one of her main duties, but then... I... I simply thought that I was wrong, but now..."

„Now you start wondering..." The hologramm nodded in agreement. „So do I, Harper, so do I."

„Check her schedule for me, will you, Romdoll?"

„You know, this is highly..."

„I know, I know, unusual, but nonetheless..." The hologramm briefly shut her eyes; and when she opened them again, the puzzled look on her face was back in full force. „Harper," she said in a crisp tone, „my avatar is on her way to see you." She had barely finished, when the avatar of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ entered the room.

"Okay, Romdoll, spit it out, what's the matter?"

The beautiful humanoid looking ‚ship made flesh' seemed upset.

„Harper, I thought we had an agreement that you wouldn't mess up with my sensors and files anymore without giving me further notice."

The young man frowned at this opening.

„We had, Romdoll, I mean, we have..." he quickly hurried himself to an answer.

„Then why do I trace erasures and changes in my data concerning Beka's activities during the last couple of days?"

„I... don't know?" Harper hesitantly offered.

„You mean, you didn't have anything to do with it?"

„Exactly. So let's find out, who has." Harper pulled a thin cable out of one of his numerous pockets and sat down at Dylan's desk. Without further delay, he simply inserted it into the small plugging device in the panel behind the table, then connecting his own dataport with it.

„Okay, Rommie, I'm in," he let the ship know as soon as he found himself within the matrix of the _Andromeda Ascendant_.

„Harper, I can detect you, you don't have to tell me," Andromeda answered him ironically, while she materialized next to him.

Harper rolled his eyes.

„I know you know. I was just being polite. So, show me."

Nodding in agreement, the ship immediately answered his request by displaying multiple files in front of them. „Here, take a look," Andromeda told him. „This is Beka's request for a two-week vacation, here the permission to do so; then the protocol of the _Maru_ leaving for Infinity Atoll, and here," she pointed to another data field coming up, „her last message from Seneshall Drift dating two days prior to her estimated time of arrival. It was addressed to..." a frown appeared on her face, „to you!" she then exclaimed. „Harper?" Her eyebrown rose inquisitively.

„Oh, that," Harper exclaimed. „She was just telling me that she was having a great time and would possibly be a couple of hours late, as she got a chance to meet with Rafe. That was all, Rommie, I swear."

„Yes, I can see that," the ship slowly replied, her thoughts obviously elsewhere already. „However, as you can see here, and here," her finger pointed to some messages encrypted in the files, „the protocol of the _Maru'_s landing two days ago is somehow scrambled, as seems to be the case with its departure shortly thereafter." Harper acknowledged with a nod, scrutinizing the indicated spots. „And the mission Beka took off on is classified."

A thoughtful expression appeared on Harper's face. „Someone went through a lot of trouble to cover up for Beka; and he seemed to have been in a bit of a hurry. Okay, I think I'm done here." And with that, the engineer jacked out.

„Sheesh!" he exclaimed, as soon as he opened his eyes seated on Dylan's desk.

The avatar of the Andromeda was expectandly looking at him, arms crossed on her chest.

„Well?"

„Well," Harper replied, „I think, Rommie, that we both know that there are but two persons with either the skill or the authorization to do this. And as it wasn't me..." he left the rest of his sentence open.

„Why should he do that, Harper?"

„I haven't got a clue. But we can always ask, can't we?"


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Dylan Hunt was lying in his living room on a sofa clearly too small for his length, his head popped against one of its arm supports, while his legs were dangling down from the other own. His eyes were resting on two framed photographs hanging on the wall right above the couch. In spite of being rather old fashioned items, long replaced by much more sophisticated, three dimensional hologramms, Dylan preferred them to all other kinds of 'bottled memories', as he used to call them: at least, they provided him with the illusion of a status-quo. And with changes in his life being mostly dramatical and often traumatizing events, status-quos were, no matter how impossible he knew them to be, a notion that he found quite appealing.

One of the photos showed him in company of a charming young woman, both of them smiling happily and relaxed. Sarah, once upon a time his bride-to-be, long lost now in the mists of the past. Amazed, he noticed upon contemplating the photograph, that he didn't hurt any longer, when he looked at her. _Now, when did that happen?_ he asked himself somewhat startled.

The other one was showing him and his senior crew; it had been taken right after they had defeated the Magog Worldship. The Commonwealth had rewarded them all with the Blue Order of the Vedran Empress, it's highest military honour, and held a ceremony to celebrate their victory. It had been one of their proudest moments, and although they all looked still exhausted from their trials, all of them were wearing happy, contended grins on their faces. He saw himself squeezed in between Rommie, his ship's avatar and most cherished friend, the only one to have survived the fall of their world along with him, and Captain Rebekkah Valentine, his first officer and most treasured companion during the six years that had passed since she had pulled them out from the event horizon of the black hole at Hepahistos. Along with them stood Trance, Harper, Rhade and Doyle, and even Reverend Behemial the Far-Traveller, all of them being the closest thing he had to a family. _Not the closest thing_, he silently corrected himself, _they **are** family_.

Alas, things had changed a lot since then.

Trance had returned to the Nebula, to „sort things out", as she put it, and although she promised to get back sometime, she didn't say when.

Rhade was now on Terrazed, reunited with his wife and his three children, bringing the Home Guard back to its former glory and working his back off as governor of the Commonwealth's capital. He seemed happy, as happy as a Nietzschean could seem, displaying an edgyly content calmness of a sort. _This doesn't make sense_, Dylan thought, _at least not in descriptions of a human_. _With Nietzscheans however..._ He refrained from thinking his thought through.

Doyle had been appointed supervisor of the restauration program on Tarn Vedra, but she at least visited frequently, as Harper, still chief engineer and newly appointed lieutenant commander, had remained on board the _Andromeda Ascendant_. With Earth gone, there was no place he felt more at home than on this warship, that by now was almost as much his creation as its avatar. Which had, of course, also remained with them.

Now and then, they still got messages from Rev, small personal notes for each of them. In the past year he had taken upon him the restauration of several hospital drifts formerly run by Wayist monks, that had been destroyed during the war with the Abyss. He seemed to make good progress, and Dylan was quite happy for him, although he still missed having Rev Bem around, their calm discussions, the monk's ability to ground him whenever he felt lost. _Don't be selfish_, the captain admonished himself severely. _Everyone is entitled to follow his or her chosen path_.

Which brought him back to Beka Valentine. His eyes lingered on her frame, her slender, graceful form clad in a uniform-like black outfit envelopping her figure like a glove. Not even for such an occasion had they managed to persuade her into wearing a dress. She had an arm firmly placed around his waist, while he was heavily leaning on both her and Rommie. Beka's head was thrown back in laughter, flashing one of her typical, infectious, overwhelming smiles into his gaunt, haggard face. He recalled being still weakened by the injuries he had sustained during the last attack of the Worldship. The monstrosity had managed to place one powerful shot of its point singularity weapon, right at the beginning of combat operations. It had hit the battle bridge Dylan was standing on, shredding it to pieces and sending him into oblivion. The surrounding smaller Commonwealth ships had been incapacitated by gravitational forces in disarray, many of them no longer capable of seriously threatening actions. The rest of the battle, that was far from over, had taken place with Beka Valentine as acting captain of the _Andromeda_ _Ascendant_ and Commodore of the High Guard fleet. Again, the Worldship had proven itself a formidable enemy, and it had taken all of Beka's ingenuosity and skill to get them through, but get them through she did. When he woke up on med-deck, the battle had been over, the Worldship was destroyed and Beka was sound asleep next to his bio-bed, one of her hands firmly holding on to one of his. And as he had tried to move, her head had come up instantly, her luminous, radiant grin lightening up the room as she reassured him:

„Don't worry, we've won, the _Maru_ is allright, and so is the _Andromeda_! Oh... and the Worldship, it is gone for good!"

_Where are you, Beka, damn' it, WHERE ARE YOU_? Dylan desperately asked himself. And then it hit him, the hurt, the ache he no longer felt when regarding Sarah: they were back in full force as he looked at Beka, wondering about where she was. By now she was two days overdue; her vacation had ended 48 hours ago, yet she had failed to come back, failed to send a message, simply disappeared from the face of the Universe. He had tried to track her down discreetly. Gone were the days when his motley crew could come and go as they pleased, when it was just the few of them trying to restore the Commonwealth, when Nietzscheans, Magog, the Spirit of the Abyss posed a threat large enough to allow them the liberties they took for themselves, without the Commonwealth authorities having time and power enough to control them. During the past year they had become a regular ship of the line, the High Guard flag ship with all the pros and cons this implicated, including a full new crew. In former days, going AWOL meant Dylan going into a temper tantrum, now it meant insubordination and desertion charges, brig, martial court etc., even for someone standing in as high a regard as Captain Rebekkah Valentine. There was an inspection coming up any day, so Dylan quietly tried to pretend that his first officer was back on board, while he was secretly inquiring after her whereabouts, desperately hoping for her to report in. Torn between his attempts to cover up for her on the one hand and on the other hand his fears that something bad had happened, preventing her from coming back on time, he felt his patience growing thinner by the minute. He was already sorry for his outburst against Harper, but he knew that if this went on for much longer, similar situations were likely to happen, no matter how much he tried to restrain the anger he felt surfacing within his guts. Anger directed at Beka for not being there, at the others for nor knowing where to find her (even though they didn't even know she was missing), at the universe itself for letting this happen. Pure, white anger! And he was desperate to find a way to bottle up this feeling, as he knew that every one of his outbursts would sooner or later invariably lead to others wondering, starting to ask questions...

Dylan's eyes slowly left Beka's face for Sarah's and then returned to his XO's features. No one would have called Beka Valentine pretty. At best, she would have been described as handsome, in an almost masculine, daredevilish sort of way. Compared to Sarah's dark, breathtaking beauty, Beka appeared too lean, her cheekbones too protruding, her blue eyes not big enough and much too pale, her lips too large, too full, her teeth too many, everything just too „too". Yet there were two qualities present in both women that made them seem like sisters. One was a fiery, aristocratic passion they both seemed to exhale through every pore; Dylan remembered ancient pictures of horses bred by Arabs on old Earth, well-muscled, powerful yet slender and graceful creatures with wonderfully earnest, warm and loving eyes, breathing an air of innate noblesse. The other quality both women shared Dylan was quite unable to define, but it was there, hidden in the sparkle of their eyes, their laughter, in the way both women held their head. And then it struck him: like Sarah, Beka was, mainly and foremost, very much alive. It was a self-confident, victorious, joyous vitality, a striking, vibrant, indomitable force of life. A force of life that no one, nothing seemed able to suppress.

_Illusions, once again_, Dylan bitterly thought. Sarah had valiantly placed her bet against the universe, against time, against all odds... and the universe had won. And what had been the most irreplaceable presence in Dylan's life had been lost forever, all passion and life turned to ashes by the mercilessly cold passing of time. He had come through this loss, all by himself - or so he thought... But then, shortly before going into their last battle with the Spirit of the Abyss, Beka had made him promise to never leave her. At first, he hadn't recognized her request for what it was: the same plea Sarah had once addressed him. It was partly due to the fact that they were going into battle, but also because Beka had expressed herself in her usual, casual way: 'Promise me, Dylan, that, whatever happens, after this we'll always ride together.' Of course he promised her, he promised even before knowing, what she was asking for. He would have promised her the world. Not to make her stay, but because he felt that she deserved it, had deserved it all along.

But then the Worldship brought him down, and recovery provided him with a lot of time to think. No matter how many visits you got, how much concern the others showed, reconvalscence was always a solitary business with one's mind often the sole - and inevitable - companion. On his way back to health, Dylan had started thinking about the past, about the others around him, even about himself, no longer capable to hide behinde some urgent matter that had to be addressed. And he had come to realize that the world he had now, the people that surrounded him, had long become as important, as vital, as much home to him as all the things he had before the Fall. They all did matter in a way he had refused to accept before, being afraid that, by doing so, he might lose them again, lose his new family, get hurt, ripped apart again in that dreadful way he found so unbearable the first time around, that he had gone into hiding behind fences not even he could tear down any more. Fortunately though, there always had been Beka: Beka to get him and the _Andromeda_ out of the black hole, Beka to stand by him no matter what, to never let him fall, to help him up when he did, Beka to make him laugh, make fun of him, kick him in the head, when she felt that he was way out of line even by his standards, to take over for him, when he couldn't go on, Beka to tear down the walls... The wonderful, daring, brave, so very much alive Beka Valentine...

Dylan Hunt closed his eyes in a silent, almost frantic prayer.

_Be alive, Beka, please, please, Beka, be alive..._

He swung his long legs to the ground and stood up in one swift, determined move. By the time his comlink announced someone at his doors, his face showed nothing else but the calm, a little distant expression usually worn by commanding officers everywhere since the beginning of historic times.

„Dylan...?"

His doors opened silently.

„Harper, do come in."


	4. Chapter 3

Gambit

Chapter 3

Harper walked into Dylan's quarters and went straight ahead to one of the armchairs placed around a small Go-table, carelessly throwing himself in, while Dylan was watching him silently without so much as a single blink. When the engineer was seated, the captain just nodded in defeat, closed and sealed his doors and quickly placed himself behind a small bar in the room's right corner.

„Something to drink, Harper?" he then asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

„This isn't exactly a social call, Dylan." The two officers' eyes locked and they simply stared at each other for a couple of seconds, Harper a little defiant, while Dylan's expression appeared to be a more pensive one.

„No, I guess, it's not," the older man admitted. And then he shrugged his shoulders and marched himself over to the other armchair, his hand carrying two glasses with some amber liquid that looked and smelled like whiskey.

„Andromeda, engage privacy mode," he ordered, sitting down and pushing one of the glasses over to Harper's place.

„Privacy mode engaged," the ship responded in an impersonal, yet pleasant tone.

The silence between the two of them dragged on as both men picked up their glasses and held them up in an ironical salute, Harper merely nipping at his drink, while Dylan simply drowned the content of the one he held in one single swallow.

„It's hard, isn't it?" the engineer asked, his tone mocking, his head cocked towards the empty glass, „fulfilling the duties of both captain and first officer at once, covering up your tracks, pretending Beka was onboard..." Seeing the captain starting to clear his throat filled the young man with some satisfaction. „Why did you do it, Dylan? Why did you send Beka alone on a classified mission with no backup, no lifeline, no... nothing?"

„A classified mission?" Puzzled, Harper noticed his commanding officer's eyes go wide in surprise.

„Well, yeess," he answered, dragging his words to buy himself some time.

„Ah, right, the mission," Dylan hurriedly said. „Well, I can't tell you about it. After all, it is classified, you know?" _Damn' it, you fool, get a grip, hold yourself together_, he quietly called himself to order.

Sharply scrutinizing the face of the man in front of him, Harper suddently noticed that he looked like he hadn't slept in ages, his eyes blood-shot, his last shaving obviously lying a good while back, the lines around his mouth deeper than usual.

„Okay, Dylan, time to come clear. What's up?"

„What do you mean?"

„I mean that Beka's not onboard, that you went from pretending that she wasn't supposed to be back to pretending that she was onboard and from there to manufacturing a file stating that she left on a classified mission, a file you clearly forgot to have planted at all until I reminded you of. I mean that, if she left at all, she did so the very day slipstream training was due to start, I mean that the files concerning Beka and the _Maru_ are at best sloppy, I mean that Rommie and I start wondering about your actions. I mean, Dylan," he angrily concluded, „that you better start talking to me **now**!"

„Rommie knows?"

Harper was taken aback. He didn't know exactly what reaction he had been expecting from Dylan, but it sure wasn't this question uttered in an almost anxious tone. As if the captain was afraid of his ship.

„Of course she knows, I told you, the fake files were really not very cleverly done. I mean, she doesn't know exactly what is going on, but she is wondering, too."

„Damn' it!" Dylan jumped to his feet and started pacing around, his brows clouded with worry, his lips pressed together. What little patience he had left, Harper was starting to loose it rapidly.

„Dylan?" he urged the man again.

„What?" the captain suddently came to a halt, startled. „Oh, yes! Harper, how much does Rommie know?"

„Just what I told you. Dylan, talk to me." He watched in amazement as the other man brought up a hand to his forehead, his eyes fixing the engineer for an instant before he seemed to come to a conclusion.

„Allright," he then said, sitting down again and looking Harper straight in the eye. And then it just seemed to come pouring out of him. „I haven't got a clue about where Beka is right now. At first, I didn't worry, I just thought she was late, I waited to hear from her about what was keeping her away, but there was no message. And no Beka. We are no longer on our own, Harper, and failing to report for duty is actually a criminal offense." Dylan got up to his feet again and resumed his pacing. „There is an inspection due any day, and frankly, I don't know what to do. I tried to inquire on her whereabouts in a very discreet way, but I didn't come up with anything at all. If I would go public, I would certainly be able to obtain more information, but then again, what if it's just another one of her..." he turned around to face the younger man, his hands up in the air suggesting quotation marks, „'freedom trips' with yet another irresistible Nietzschean or some ‚friend' from the good old days with a warrant on his head in at least two galaxies?" The captain's voice sounded sarcastic and also somewhat bitter. "If she's in trouble and can't contact us, and I don't take action, I may risk her life. If it's just another stupid quest and I go public, I will risk her carreer, everything she's worked so hard for in those past six years. I can't even tell Rommie or Rhade. They're High Guard, they have to inform High Command on everything they know. Hell, **you** have to inform High Command, as you are High Guard, too. But since you found out anyway, you might just as well start thinking about how we should proceed, because right now I am stuck between a rock and a hard place; and I don't know how to get out."

Dylan sat down again, his hands behind his neck, stretching his legs to full length and watching his empty glass with longing eyes before looking up again into Harper's face, who hadn't said anything yet.

„So now you know!"

„Now I know!" Harper's voice was dripping with sarcasm. „Boy, do I know now! I know that you have neither a clue nor a plan, that you just spent 48 precious hours doing nothing, that you faked reports and files in the most amateurish manner I have ever seen. And you accuse me of not thinking?"

„I know, Harper, I blew it, I just couldn't..."

„Of course you couldn't. You never can."

„Excuse me?"

„Oh, come on, Dylan. It really is no secret. When it comes to Beka, you just always lose it."

„What do you mean, I lose it? When have I ever lost it? I always, **always**," he stressed, straightening himself up, „tried to be as understanding and supportive and tolerant as humanly possible, never mending with what she considers to be her business, standing out of her way when she wants me to, letting her make her own choices, no matter how stupid I think them to be and," Dylan's pointed index finger came dangerously close to Harper's nose, „being there to pick up the pieces when the outcome proves me right." He stood up to full height, his eyes blazing indingnantly, towering over Harper, who looked up at him defiantly before jumping himself to his feet.

„Like when you let her throw herself at Tyr to find out his schemes for you, like when you agreed to let her try to take you to Tarn Vedra, like when you made her go to Leydon to get you the Hegemon's Heart, or sent her along to guard the fake princess you fell for, expected her to play nice with Sid, accused her of betraying you to Jonah or forced her to choose between you and Rafe...?" Harper's eyes suddently went wide. His attention, only an instant before enragedly focused on Dylan, seemed to completely shift away, that much so that he even failed to notice Dylan's fists firmly closing around the chest of his shirt.

„Rafe!" he then exclaimed. Startled, Dylan let his hands relax and stepped back from Harper.

„Rafe?" he asked. „As in Raphael Valentine?"

„The one and only," Harper bitterly replied. „I got a message from Beka two days before we were expecting her back. She was telling me that she had a chance to see Rafe on Seneshall Drift on the very day she was supposed to be heading home. The rest was just... smalltalk, you know, the kind you do when you're on vacation and the others are at home working their butts off."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know something was up? I mean, there was a certain captain being very, very secretive about this whole business, remember?" Harper suggested. "I didn't pay any attention then, but now I know that she is missing..."

„You think that Rafe might have a part in that." And then Dylan kicked into action as suddently as if hit by an electric shock. "Andromeda, disengage privacy mode. Harper, get yourself to Command and set a course for Seneshall Drift. Rommie, have Harper's message from Beka ready to show me, when I reach the bridge."

As his doors opened, Captain Hunt began jogging to Command as fast as he could, his engineer close an his heels.

„Captain on deck!" bellowed the corporal guarding the door to Command, that was almost deserted at this time of day. Only two technical officers were on duty on this early night shift, who immediately stood to attention.

„As you were!" Dylan didn't bother to race around the rail separating the technical and strategic consoles from the command stations, he simply leapt across it, sliding behind the helm in one swift move. "Clear the deck!" he sharply ordered the two startled crew members, who saluted and left on the spot.

„Andromeda, seal the doors. Mr Harper?" he impatiently addressed his engineer, who had almost thrown himself behind the navigation console and was busily typing away his commands.

„Almost done, boss, almost done. There, course set for Seneshall Drift."

„Okay, Andromeda, open a slipstream portal. Give me shipwide."

The image of the _Andromeda Ascendant _appeared on the main screen.

„Slipstream portal opening, aye, Captain."

„All stations, this is the Captain speaking. Brace for slipstream on my mark. Three... two... one and mark..."

The warship entered slipstream and followed the course set by Harper. It was smoothly flying away under the expert hands of her captain, though not as smoothly as it would have done it had Beka been at her helm. But they were going to see to it that slipstream flights with the _Andromeda_ returned to their usual silk-like softness. They were going to find Beka and get her back. Or so Dylan and Harper were silently swearing to themselves, as they approached the exit point to Seneshall Drift.

As always: reviews are highly appreciated ( and taken into account).


	5. Chapter 4

Gambit Chapter 4

Seneshall Drift. What had originally started out as one of the young Commonwealth's bridge-heads into the Triangulum Galaxy, was now, thousands of years later, a complicated, vast, elaborate construction of almost stellar dimensions, that made even such a majestic ship like the _Andromeda Ascendant_ look like an insignificant, annoying bug. While already growing at amazing pace to one of the most important trading points under the old Commonwealth rule, it had literally exploded way out of proportion after the Fall, when it became the headquarter of the newly founded Free Traders' Alliance. It now extended itself throughout a quarter of the Pirithoous solar system, its complex structure including even a small planet and several asteroids that had become encorporated into it, as the drift had grown around them with time. But for a small part of it, Seneshall had become less and less governable, as its sheer size became more and more of a convenient shield criminals and crooks of all sort could hide under. As the FTA joined the Restored Systems' Commonwealth, administration in general and executive powers like law enforcement in particular had grown more efficient. But even now there were about two fifths of the drift that remained virtually out of reach for the authorities.

Dylan Hunt sighed heavily. Of all places, it had to be this one, where they had to start looking for Beka... The captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ stood on Command, legs spread wide, hands on his hips, while his eyes were helplessly watching the three main screens on the bridge, clearly at a loss as to where to start searching for his XO. Even for the _Andromeda'_s huge central monitors, Seneshall Drift was too big to be shown entirely on just one of them.

„Dammit, Harper," he stated in an irritated voice, „there are no records whatsoever concerning the _Eureka Maru_ to be found on any of the landing stations or dry docks."

„Maybe we should also try all hotels, hospitals and militia stations, boss," the engineer suggested, his face no less exasperated than the captain's.

„If we do so, we will have to let Rommie in on this."

Right on cue, the doors of the Command Deck slid open, revealing Rommie's gracious features wearing a friendly, indeed much too friendly smile.

„Dylan!" she exclaimed, as the two officers spun around to face her. And then, acknowledging her engineer's presence: „Harper! Guess what? Someone sealed the doors to Command and engaged privacy mode, trying to keep me out!"

The two men exchanged a furtive, worried look.

„So, how did you manage to get in?" Dylan demanded to know.

„Oh, you know me, resourceful little warship, driven by the need to satisfy my female curiosity, and so forth and so on..." She cocked her head to one side, her smile's friendliness meanwhile somewhat attenuated by one of her eyebrows risen amazingly high. „Mind telling me, what's going on?" she then asked, her voice as sweet as honey. She stepped closer to her commander, who simply resigned himself to stare at her in silence, arms crossed behind his back. Shifting her attention away from him, she approached Harper, going around him in a lazy circle.

„No?" she whispered into his ear, loud enough for the other man to hear, suddently leaning her head nearer to Harper's while coming to a halt behind his back.

„Rommie, don't do this!" the young man protested in an indignant, yet obviously intimidated tone.

„Do what?" the avatar persisted, coming even closer, more than ever resembling a gracious, interested cobra.

„Rommie!" Dylan's sharp manner got her attention. „Leave Harper alone. Whatever is going on here, is my decision, and mine alone." The android looked hurt.

„Why, Dylan, why? I know that something isn't right, I know that Beka's gone and I could override your commands on suspicion that they violate Commonwealth law."

„You could," the captain quietly admitted, „of course you could, but will you?"

„Unless you give me a good enough reason not to do it – yes," Rommie replied defiantly.

„What if we have a good enough reason?" Harper cut in.

„What if you let me be the judge of that?" came the edgy reply. „I think that I deserve at least that much," she then concluded, her eyes meeting her captain's in a straight gaze.

Dylan blew out his breath in a somewhat lost manner. Running a hand through his hair, he let his eyes drop to the floor.

„You're right," he finally uttered, lifting his head again to look at her. „I... I just don't know, what to do. I want to let you in, but then I will cause a conflict of loyalties to you, that I am sure you could without."

The avatar's stern expression softend up a little.

„Try me, Dylan!" she then urged him. And, turning her head towards her engineer: „Harper?"

„Oh, damn' it, Romdoll, you already guessed it... almost," Harper just burst out.

„The files were fake?" Rommie asked him. Harper nodded.

„Dylan made them up?" A nod again.

„To cover up for Beka?" By now, both men had at least the decency to look embarrassed.

„There never was a classified mission, was there now?"

„Check, check, check... and check," Harper admitted.

„Right!" the female android concluded. „So now that I know, I might just as well start a full scanning of Seneshall Drift, see if I find Beka."

„No!" Dylan exploded.

Slowly, the avatar turned towards him, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time.

„NO?"

„If you do so, Rommie, you'll have to record the data and send a backup file over to High Command. And then they'll know that Beka's missing. And if you don't report, then you'll be under charges of insubordination, as well." He vigorously shook his head, walked over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. „Harper and I, and eventually Beka, are already in trouble, as it is. If Beka just took off following one of her ‚ideas'" Dylan smirked in disdain, „and High Command finds out that we... that **I** tried to cover up for her, I'm history, and so is she – and Harper."

„Surely they won't kick out Dylan Hunt for something like that..." Harper lamely fell in, not sounding too hopeful.

„They have no choice... Military is discipline, rules, following orders to the letter. You can't do that, you're out," Dylan said. „You're not accustomed to that yet, Harper, and I have fallen out of practice, even Rommie has lightened up a bit."

„A bit?" Rommie teased.

„Okay, a lot," he smilingly gave in. „Insubordination charges against a officer is serious business. But insubordination charges against a warship is a different ball game altogether." By the distant, earnest look on Rommie's face, Dylan knew that she understood.

„It's the way it is, Dylan," she said in a soft voice.

„Erasure?" Harper incredulously asked. „Oh, come on, guys, aren't you painting things a little bit too black?"

„Perhaps," Dylan inserted, „but I am unwilling to take a risk."

„Maybe I am, though," Rommie answered. Her voice strong, her manner even more determined than usual, she stood tall between her two officers. „**I** am the _Andromeda Ascendant_, a personality in my own right. **I** have restored the Commonwealth, defended it against its enemies, secured and strengthen it against all odds. And I have done it only with the help of my crew, my friends, of whom one might right now be in trouble. It is _my_ right to help her, _my_ choice to make, I have earned it, and no one – **no one**, Dylan," she stressed, „is allowed to question that, to make decisions for me on that matter."

„I didn't mean to patronize you, Rommie."

„Yet patronizing me you did." She sounded hurt, not at all appeased by his remark. „Did you really think that I would go off running to High Command, had you told me the truth about Beka?"

„No!" Dylan exclaimed, „Of course I didn't. I just didn't want you to face such a dilemma."

„But she is right, boss, you cannot decide for her on such matters!"

„Beka is my friend, Dylan, just as she is yours. When the going gets tough, there can be no question as to where my loyalties lie." The tall man silently watched his two companions for an instant, his eyes shifting back and forth between them. And then a small smile appeared in a corner of his mouth, slowly creeping up his face until it reached his eyes.

„Okay," he nodded, „let's get Beka!"


	6. Chapter 5

Gambit

Chapter 5

„This place is really huge," Rommie admitted, while running through the data she had downloaded from the drift as fast as she could. Which was pretty fast, as Harper knew, who stood to her left, trying to pry over her shoulder from time to time.

„Harper, do you mind?" the android complained in an angried voice, slightly shoving him out of the way.

„Got anything, Rommie?"

„Not yet, Harper."

„Rommie, show me the message Beka sent to Harper," Dylan cut in, obviously as impatient as the engineer. „Put it through to the briefing room," he ordered and left Command at a hurried pace.

„Got anything, Rommie?" Harper asked again. Rommie briefly looked up from her console, her eyes staring straight ahead, an exasperated look on her face.

„This is not in the least helpful, not a bit, you know?" she told him reproachfully.

„I'm sorry," the young man apologized. Silence settled in. Just a couple of minutes later though, the engineer was back next to her elbow. She didn't even nod towards him, quietly continuing her search. After some more time spent in silence, Harper felt his resolve vanishing.

„Rommie?..." he shyly tried anew.

The Andromeda's avatar spun on her heels and shot him an outraged glare.

„That's enough, Harper. Go," she pointed to the door to the briefing room, „just go, get yourself a Sparky Cola, start building some device, bug Dylan, just get out!"

„Come on, Rommie, it's not as if you couldn't multi-task!"

„Running through data and telling you that I haven't got anything yet every other minute, isn't multi-tasking, it is just annoying! Out!" Her arms crossed on her chest, she watched her engineer back away and leave. A slight frown between her brows she then returned to her station.

-

Dylan had run Beka's message three times in a row to no avail. No hidden clues, no hints, nothing. Just his first officer's relaxed, well-rested, tanned face as she was joking around with Harper.

„Oh, by the way," he heard her say a fourth time, „guess, who's coming to dinner? Oh, never mind, you'll never find out: Rafe! He got me a message saying that he was also staying on Infinity. This guy, Perec or Parec or whatever, you know, the one I met in your surfing bar, told him I was there, and he came looking for me. If dinner's nice, I might be persuaded to give him a ride over to Seneshall Drift on my way home. He told me that he's got some business to attend to over there." Beka giggled merely. „Don't worry, I won't ask anything about it, hell, I won't even get off on Seneshall. Just drop him and be off again. But it might slow me down a little, so don't worry if I'm a little late. Okay, stay safe, Harper, big hug for you, kiss Rommie for me and don't let Dylan break the slipstream drive..." _close enough_, Dylan thought, „oh, what the heck, give him a hug, too. See you, Harper! Beka out."

„Captain!" the hologram of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ stood next to him, impassively, yet somewhat saddend while contemplating the man's pained expression. „Do you want me to replay the message once more?"

„No, thank you, Rommie. I hoped to find something in it, but... I don't think there is."

„Well,..." the hologram stated thoughtfully, „I think there is one hint."

„There is?" Dylan anxiously asked.

„Obviously, Beka did not plan to go missing. I think, for what it's worth, Captain, that we can at least inform High Guard Command on the situation. Whatever happened, Beka didn't go AWOL. Something came up, something she did not expect."

„I know. You're right, of course," Dylan acknowledged, „but you never know with Rafe. There were two days between this message and Beka's ETA back onboard. God only knows, what happened in the meantime."

„Incoming message." A monitor flackered into view displaying the _Andromeda_'s persona sternly staring forward.

„Beka?" Dylan quickly asked, a hopeful undertone in his voice.

„I'm afraid not, Dylan," the hologram responded, turning towards him in an attempt to show some compassion, as her words shattered his faint hopes. „It's from Terrazed, Governor Rhade."

For a moment, the High Guard shut his eyes, his nose curling up, his upper lip revealing his teeth in an angry smirk. „Darn!" he uttered through clenched jaws, only to then quickly straighten himself up to full height, his features relaxing into his impassive, usual ‚captain's mask', as Beka used to call it.

„Put it through," he said, anxiously waiting for the handsome familiar face to appear on screen.

„Rhade," Dylan greeted the man in what he hoped to be a cheerful tone. „How are you?"

„Fine, thank you, Dylan. How are you?"

„Great. How is Gillian, how are the children?"

„Everyone's sound and well."

„I'm glad to hear that."

„Well, it might have made you even gladder, had you come to check for yourself."

„I will, Rhade, believe me, I will," Dylan smiled assuringly.

„Actually, I thought that we had an appointment for tonight. We were expecting you and Beka over for dinner, remember? What happened?" Telemachus Rhade inconspicuously inquired in a polite manner.

Dylan's face fell for only about a fracture of a second. Yet it was enough for the governor's Nietzschean eyes to notice.

„In case you're wondering, Dylan," he then calmly offered, „I am at home, and this a restricted, very secure, very private channel I am using."

„Excuse me?"

„I had a call from Tri-Lorn this afternoon. He informed me that the Andromeda Ascendant has left Terrazed space without further notice. As you are scheduled for slipstream training all week long and thus have three more days to go, he was a little surprised, to put it mildly. Tell me, are slipstream routes more demanding over there, or why else are you now in orbit around Seneshall Drift?"

„Actually, we thought slipstream entrance points around here indeed more demanding," Dylan replied, immediately recognizing a straw to hold on, when he saw one.

„We?" the Nietzschean questioned. „So I take it that Captain Valentine shares your views?"

„Of course she does."

„In that case, I will inform Tri-Lorn about your changed plans, but it would be helpful to have a report from you and Captain Valentine to back my words."

„No, it wouldn't," Dylan sternly answered. Rhade's brown eyes darkened even more.

„I see." A pensive expression on his handsome traits, the long-time lieutenant commander of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ nodded in agreement.

„I take it the Matriarch can not be disturbed right now?" he asked in a low voice.

„Quite so," the captain stated, no further attempting to throw smalltalk bits into the conversation.

„Well, at least I'm glad I found you. Listen, Gillian and I would be really happy, if you two could make it to our place when you're back."

„So would we, Telemachus, really, so would we. I'm glad you understand. My apologies to Gillian."

„Oh, never mind. I'll be happy to oblige. Anything else I can do for you?"

„Put the triumvirs' minds at peace, could you?"

In spite of the tension palpable between the two men, an understanding smile appeared on Telemachus Rhade's face.

„That I can do, Dylan. I'm sure they understand that you'll need at least one more week to complete the training." His right fist hit his chest, opening to an outstreched hand as his arm flew out in greeting.

„Live well, my friend."

A relieved grin almost split Dylan's face in half.

„Live well; I'll keep you posted. Dylan out."

He ran a weary hand across his face, exhaling deeply. „Andromeda," he then said, „did you record the conversation?"

„Aye, Captain."

„Very well. We now have High Command clearance to stay away for a week, maybe ten days." The hologram nodded affirmatively, a serious little smile upon her face.

„Let's go see, if Rommie has come up with something!"

Please read and review. Feedbacks are really highly appreciated.

Okay, by now I know you want to find out about Beka; I'll get there, but you'll have to bear with me on this one a little longer. Sorry!


	7. Chapter 6

Gambit

Chapter 6

For a week they had been following all tracks, looking everywhere, not leaving a single stone unturned, going after every remote hint and every unlikely indication, no matter how far fetched, that might have led them to Beka, the _Maru_, even Rafe. They ended up with nothing but dead ends, all of them becoming more and more anxious as yet another day slipped by without a trace of the _Andromeda'_s first officer or her ship.

Strange enough, Dylan Hunt, who had at first been the most frantic one of them, seemed to calm down the longer the tedious search went on. He thoroughly followed every hint, never ruling out any possibility their inquiries provided them with, completely focused on finding Beka. Unfortunately, all other issues, that were not directly related to his XO's whereabouts, like running a warship for example, supervising training sessions or even much, much simpler tasks, like going to sleep on a regular basis, seemed to just pass him by.

However, they did have Rommie, who took over smoothly, running the ship, helping the crew out, monitoring all functions, all the while she looked into the meager data they received on Beka, kept Governor Rhade posted, performing with superb excellency on every level, efficiently supported by her chief engineer's quietly provided aid. Whatever she asked for, no matter what she needed, Harper was always there to deliver with amazing speed.

Seamus Harper was everywhere at once, searching himself for Beka, meeting Rommie's needs with unprecedented promptness, presenting himself to their newly appointed crew as an always available, approachable and very competent officer, supervising slipstream training with definitely more sensitivity and care than Dylan had been able to come up with. Had the captain taken the time to notice, he would have marvelled at the thoughtful reliability displayed by the _Andromeda_'s ‚resident genius', the very same person who at all other times seemed almost genetically incapable to stay out of trouble.

Nonetheless, they were running out of time. After following up to a hundred leads a day, of which some had gotten them to the most unlikely, far away corners of the Known Worlds, that they reached by scheduling quite amazing slipstream courses as training routes for their green crew mates, they still stood empty-handed as far as Beka's disappearance was concerned. With each hour passing, Rhade's questions became more and more frequent, Harper's exterior calmness and efficiency more and more stressed, while even Rommie, however awkward this appeared to be, was beginning to show signs of running out of patience. Only Dylan Hunt continued about his task at hand, day after exasperating day, without any display of emotion whatsoever. Ignoring Rhade's incomming massages, the crew's puzzled expressions when they incidentaly met him, Harper's and Rommie's worried looks behind his back, he simply remained locked up in his office for most of the time, looking through vast amounts of ultimately useless data, emerging from there only when one hint, that seemed somewhat less improbable than others, led them to yet another futile attempt to locate Beka in an unlikely place. After checking the planet, asteroid, drift, or whatever it was the last ‚promising' piece of information had been leading them to, with unnerving thoroughness, after one more pointless conversation with some clueless ‚witness', he always returned to the _Andromeda_ as if just coming back from some social call, not seeming more down or annoyed by yet another fruitless attempt to reach their goal, than he had been before.

„Incoming communication from Terrazed, Dylan!" The _Andromeda_'s hologram flickered into being next to the desk in the captain's office.

„You take it, Rommie," came the almost automatic reply from the man seated at the table, whose eyes never left the flexi he was holding in his hand. After studying it with utmost care, he then dropped it on the right side of his desk, where there already was a pile of more flexis growing up, as the one on his left was rapidly diminishing.

„I'm afraid that Governor Rhade is insisting on talking to you personally, this time," the hologram said in an impassive tone.

The captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ looked up at her, a frown between his brows, before he then conceded to take the message as requested.

„Very well, put him through!"

Telemachus Rhade's face appeared on screen, his expression no longer as calm as usual, his eyes scrutinizing Dylan Hunt's traits. The Vedran looked a little worse for wear than last time he had seen him, but that was to be expected. What really troubled the Nietzschean though, was the almost total lack of life he detected in the gaze of the _Andromeda_'s captain.

„Hello, Rhade!" Dylan greeted him quietly, his toneless voice adding to the impression left by his eyes.

„Dylan! Is everything all right with you?"

The older man didn't even bother to reply.

„What can I do for you, Telemachus?"

„Wrong question, Dylan. This time it's more like ‚what can **I **do for **you**'?"

Relieved, Rhade saw his former captain crack the shadow of a smile.

„Really? Can you buy us more time?"

„Better. I might have news on Beka..."

„WHAT? Is she alive? Where is she? What kind of news? Good news or bad news? Damn' it, Rhade, TALK!"

„I'm trying, Dylan, I am trying! To answer all your questions: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know!" Rhade had been annoyed by Dylan interrupting him, but now he felt almost pity watching the other man's face, that had one instant ago suddently come to life, fall back into the rigid mask displayed before.

„Yeah," the captain slowly nodded, „**that** news I got myself."

„No, Dylan, listen, I am serious. I got a call from Doyle..."

„Doyle?"

„Yes, she couldn't reach you. It seems that every time she sent a message to one destination, you were already off heading for some other place."

„What did she say?"

„Yesterday she went shopping on Valparaiso-Station."

„Fascinating," Dylan dryly remarked. Rhade frowned at him, but then decided to ignore the comment.

„She saw this guy there, selling maps of slipstream routes, and music, ancient music, on cd," the governor of Terrazed announced, pleased to see his words rekindle a small flicker of hope on Dylan's face. The captain stood behind his chair, his hands firmly gripping the head rest so hard his knuckles had gone white.

„On cd?"

„Quite. Doyle swears that they are Beka's, she says that they had listened to them together in Harper's bar back in the old..."

„Beka would never have parted with those voluntarily. Maybe they weren't hers," Dylan fell in.

„Doyle seemed pretty certain." There was a slight hesitation, before Rhade went on. "There is more, Dylan. The seller said that the music and maps belonged together, that he had gotten them from some guy he had met on Myrmidon."

„A Nietzschean?" Myrmidon was the new homeworld to the Drago-Katzov, one of the last prides still stubbornly refusing to acknowledge Beka's authority as Matriarch of the Nietzscheans and as reluctant as ever to join the Commonwealth. Although no longer as powerful nor as numerous as they had been once, they still posed a real danger to be reckoned with. They were a fierce, mercy- and reckless people of warriors and brilliant scientific minds focused solely on fighting skills and warfare technology. Dylan's question was pretty superfluous. No one, who wasn't Drago-Katzov and was in his right mind, would have ventured there.

„Actually no, he wasn't. The description Doyle got of the man on Myrmidon... Well, it seems to fit the description of Raphael Valentine quite well."

„Rafe? On Myrmidon?" Dylan let go of his chair and brought his hands up to his forehead, striking his hair back from it in a nervous gesture. „Now that is stupid, even for Rafe."

„I don't know." Rhade shrugged his shoulders. „The Nietzschean Doyle met seemed to think that he was held in high regard by the Drago-Katzov."

Dylan's eyes narrowed.

„This is weird."

„Is it?" Rhade asked him flatly.

„Don't go there, Rhade!" Dylan ordered sharply.

„It wouldn't be the first time..."

„Yes, it would," the other one objected, his tone ruling out any further comment. „You really think Beka defected to the Drago-Katzov taking Rafe with her, to go then into the music-selling business?"

„I don't think anything at all. I merely suggest that we give the matter a closer look."

„Agreed."

„There is only one small problem, Dylan..."

„Oh, let me guess, High Command is..."

„Starting to ask questions," Rhade confirmed. „It might be best, if I go to Myrmidon..."

„No way, Rhade. I'll go myself. You stay put and try to come up with some good story, one that implicates Beka and me having to sort out some business of utmost importance for the Commonwealth, etc., etc., etc. In case something goes wrong, we might need your help to bail us out. Meanwhile I'll leave Rommie and Harper in charge of the _Andromeda_."

„You think they're up to finishing the training sessions all by themselves?"

„Well, they did a great a job with the new crew so far. Besides, Beka and I might need them as a backup later." Dylan shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. „I... Frankly, I haven't been of great help lately."

Telemachus Rhade pensively contemplated the man, who had started to pace around, carefully avoiding the Nietzschean's eyes. _Damn' it_, he thought, _he is at it as if he already found Beka, as if there is a way of knowing that she is still alive and well... and on our side_. Rhade shut his eyes for a fraction of a second. _Dylan is right_, he silently pleaded with himself. _Don't go there, Rhade, just **don't** go there._

„Okay, Dylan, we'll do this your way," he finally agreed. „I'll think of something to tell High Command. Check regularly with Harper and Rommie and have them keep me posted, please. Stay safe."

„I will. And thanks; I really owe you," Dylan admitted, sounding both relieved and anxious for this conversation to be over.

„I know, I know, you just want to get going..."

„That obvious, eh?" The _Andromeda_'s captain flashed a lopsided grin towards his friend. „I'm sorry, Telemachus, it's just that..."

„I know," Rhade cut in, smiling himself a little. „I understand. Just one more thing, though..."

„What?"

„The maps, the slipstream routes Doyle got with the music..."

„What of them?"

„They show the way to Ralpathia."


	8. Chapter 7

**Benesound: Thanks so much for reviewing. I really appreciate your comments.**

Chapter 7

The courier dispatched by the Governor made good time, and so they had received the package containing the items purchased by Doyle from the Nietzschean on Valaparaiso only hours after Dylan's conversation with Rhade. Looking through it in the briefing room, Harper, Rommie and Dylan had then quickly decided on their next course of action.

The cds were definitely Beka's. The maps did have a familiar air about them, reminding them of the elaborate, complex, highly dangerous slipstream routes they had already followed once, a long time ago, when Beka had decided to try and bring Dylan back home to a Tarn Vedra that had been gone for centuries. The attempt had almost killed them all, so Dylan wanted to let Rommie and Harper thoroughly analyze the data while waiting for him to get back from Myrmidon. In spite of both being at first very vocal in their protest against his plans, both the engineer and the AI had finally agreed to them.

„I still think it's too dangerous," Rommie insisted one last time.

„I'll make a note of it," Dylan snapped at her impatiently, already turning away to climb into the slip fighter that was to take him down to the Nietzschean home world. Only when he heard a sharp intake of breath, did he realize how it must have sounded. Sighing, he turned around to face the two officers, who were accompanying him to the launching deck. His eyes met with the disapproving glare of the _Andromeda_'s avatar, before locking onto Harper's, whose face clearly betrayed his concern.

„I'm sorry," the captain acquiesced, putting his arms around their shoulders. „You're right, of course, but we've already been through that and as I see it, it is too dangerous anyway. We don't know what's up, what kind of trouble Beka and, probably, Rafe as well are in, and it really would be foolish to risk more than we absolutely have to."

„But Dylan, I would..." Harper tried.

„With your past record with the Drago-Khatzov I'd rather have you not, Harper. And Rommie: they **are** very dangerous and greedy when it comes to warfare technology. As we all know what a superb piece of warfare technology, indeed a one-man..." he apologetically smiled down on her, „sorry, one-girl-army you actually are, I would think that they would do everything in their power to get to you, no matter what. I wouldn't want to risk that unless it's absolutely necessary." He drew them closer to him in a small gesture of affection, then let go.

„One week," he finally said while he seated himself into the slip fighter, already fastening his seatbelts. „If you don't hear from me by then, call in the cavalry!"

Avoiding Drago-Khatzov air defenses proved quite tricky. Hidden within an asteroid belt just outside the Illion solar system, the _Andromeda Ascendant_ could do nothing but monitor her captain's struggles. Seamus Harper and Rommie exchanged many worried looks, before they saw the slip fighter finally disappear within the atmosphere of Myrmidon.

„He's through, he made it," Rommie triumphantly announced.

„Yeah, we'll see about that," Harper replied unconvinced. It startled him to suddenly feel his hand taken into a strong grip. Looking aside, he met with Rommie's reassuring smile. His hand squeezed back, as both of them turned their attention back to the main screen, where there was nothing more to see, bracing themselves for the long wait ahead.

The flight down to the surface had been bumpy, but not more so than he had expected. Once through with Drago-Khatzov defense drones, Dylan Hunt looked for a place to land his fighter on the outskirts of the city Rommie had made out as home of Sarpedon Ahmeses out of Stateira by Telamon, the Nietzschean who had sold Doyle the package. He found a spot in a small area guarded by trees and high rocks, merely two miles away from the house in a residential area that Rommie had pointed out to him. As soon as he touched ground, the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ unfastened his belts and opened a small locker. Removing two force lances, that he immediately strapped on his thighs, a tiny flexi displaying a map of the area and a scanner, he held in for an instant as his hand brushed against a silvery disk also inserted there. A strange expression on his face, he took it out and turned it over in his hands.

_They were still stuck on Seefra, struggling to become a crew again, searching for their lost _esprit de corps_, licking their wounds, the _Andromeda_ far from full power. At the end of yet another exasperating day, Dylan had withdrawn, almost fled to Obs Deck, gazing out at constellations that no longer provided comfort like they used to do, as he couldn't recognize them. With environmental systems back online and the crew's personal data files available, he had been able to ask for a piece of music he always had cherished. It hadn't been playing for long though, when the others had walked in on him._

„_Hey, Dylan! What are you doing here?" Trance had asked him puzzled._

„_Listening to some ancient music," he had answered, slightly annoyed by the interruption._

„_Hardly," Beka teased. „What in the name of the Vedran Empress is this?" she then asked in a mocking tone._

_Before Dylan could reply, Harper had cut in sharply:_

„_Hey, quiet on the cheap seats. There might be some of us who like this!"_

„_Yes, 300 hundred years old relics, for once."_

„_Oh, come on, Bek', I like it too," Harper stated in Dylan's defense._

_She looked surprised._

„_Really?"_

„_Really," he insisted._

„_It figures." Telemachus Rhade, who had remained silent throughout the quick exchange of words, joined the conversation. „It is from Earth, isn't it, Dylan?"_

„_Yeah, it is," the captain told them dryly. „Thank you, Mr. Harper, for coming to my rescue. I appreciate it, especially as I know that it isn't exactly the kind of music you're usually enjoying. And as it doesn't seem to be to anyone else's liking either, I'll take it and myself off to my quarters..."_

„_Oh, come on, Dylan, cheer up! Don't be like this..." Beka tried to make up. „I didn't mean it like that. It's just... It's strange!" _

„_What is it?" Trance suddenly asked in that purposefully innocent tone they had come to recognize as her way to attempt to distract them from something or the other._

_For an instant they stood in silence, listening to the __complicated sonorous pattern woven by the two voices they could make out. One of them was crystal clear, crisp and sounded vaguely mechanical, had it not been for the various changes it experienced in its intensity. The other one was low, vibrant, sometimes singing; it sounded almost human._

„_The Brahms sonatas for piano and cello, I presume," Rhade said, obviously not at all presuming._

„_Rhade, ever the expert, I can see," Dylan confirmed in a surprised tone._

_The Nietzschean shrugged._

„_Johannes Brahms was an Earth composer, highly appreciated in his time. The main rival of Richard Wagner. I for one always found him highly overrated."_

_Dylan nodded. Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Paul Musseveni, the holy trinity of the Nietzschean pantheon. It figured._

„_Aha! Good, old Johannes Brahms." Harper exclaimed. „A man of talent __**and**__ good taste, I see!"_

„_Mr Harper!" the captain tiredly admonished him, cocking his head towards the engineer. Seeing Rhade's face darken at the slight insult, Beka hurriedly stepped in. Their resident Nietzschean was not one for light jokes on him these days._

„_Cut it out, guys! It's not worth it. I mean, you can't even dance to it..."_

_Obviously knowing what she was trying to do and appreciating it, Dylan stepped closer to Beka and put his arms around her._

„_Oh yes, you can. May I?" They started to move slowly to the music that surrounded them. Placing her hands on his shoulders, Beka smiled up to him. _

„_A little late for asking," she answered in a teasing voice. „You're already at it!"_

_The others stood in silence, watching the two captains lazily waltz around the huge hall. It looked a little awkward, as Beka had a point: it wasn't exactly music meant for dancing. Yet, as time went by, the complicated patterns of the music seemed more and more to merge with the very essence of the two humans, sound and movement generating a lovely picture of complete harmony. It wasn't long before Harper and Doyle were following their example, with Rhade and Trance joining not much later._

_By the time the music came to an end, Beka's head was comfortably resting on Dylan's shoulder; Doyle chatted happily with Harper in a low voice, while Rhade seemed lost in Trance's eyes, looking almost at peace for the first time since their arrival on Seefra._

„_Can you... Can you record that one for me, please?" Beka had asked almost shyly._

_Dylan had nodded, and – amazingly enough – he had kept his promise, although she could have sworn that he would forget all about it the minute she walked out of his sight. Like he usually did on Seefra, with so many things he considered trifle, no matter how important they really were to others. That he had not forgotten, had helped restart their friendship._

With one last look at the silvery disk displaying a small inscription that read ‚I. Pramz' on it, Dylan pushed it back into the locker, that he closed firmly before leaving his slip fighter in a hurry.

„_The spelling's wrong, Beka!"_

„_I don't think he cares... Besides: if he had wanted it any differently, he should have taken care not to have one of those funny German names in the first place!"_

He quickly pressed the codes that secured the small spacecraft, regretting that he didn't have a possibility to hide it from view a little better. But as there were no bushes around that he could have stripped for branches, all he could do was to rely on the trees and rocks to provide enough cover.

He started running towards the city at a fast, yet steady, cautious pace, avoiding roads and constantly checking the skies for aircrafts that could have spotted him. The landscape was barren, and he knew that, if someone detected him, he would have trouble finding immediate cover, in spite of the darkness that surrounded him.

Fortunately, he reached the outskirts of the city and took cover behind something that looked like a Vedran pine, a large conifer of some sort, whose needles proved much sharper than Dylan had expected.

„Ouch!" he indignantly muttered under his breath, as one of them grazed his cheek. „I hate needles!"

According to his map the house he was looking for was pretty close by, not more than five blocks ahead. Unfortunately, the streets were provided with daybright lighting, so that he was no longer protected by the darkness, although there now were buildings, plants etc. to hide behind.

Drawing one of his force lances, Dylan cautiously moved forward. Three blocks further down the road he abruptly came to a halt.

Two huge Nietzscheans were patrolling in opposite directions up and down a small, otherwise lovely square with only one street leading out of it on each of its sides.

„It's never easy!" the irritated Vedran whispered. His map showed him that he simply had to cross it somehow, as any detour possible seemed to end up sooner or later in just another square similar to this one. Knowing Nietzschean thoroughness – and paranoia – Dylan suspected that, for all their flowery, charming appearance, the squares were meant more as checkpoints of the residents in the area than as resting spaces for free citizens savoring afterwork hours. Frozen on his spot between the bushes behind a garden fence, the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ almost chuckled, while contemplating the idea of the two muscled giants enjoying the recreational calmness of the place, a glass of lemonade in their hands. But then he seemed to come to a decision.

His hand closed around several tiny little stones that covered the garden path that led around the bushes he was hiding under. Carefully easing himself up, Dylan threw one of them as far away to the other side of the street, as he possibly could. It really was a very small stone and it made but an almost imperceptible sound as it dropped there against a fence. Yet the guard, who had just reached the entrance to the square, spun around almost instantaneously, his superior hearing experiencing no difficulty in detecting the faint sound. The well lit place was empty of all life signs, but the Nietzschean didn't doubt for a moment that there really had been an unusual sound. He softly whistled to his colleague, who approached him rapidly.

„What's up?" he asked his comrade.

„I don't know," the other one replied. „I heard something."

„That late?"

„I definitely heard something."

„Let's check it out then!" the first one offered, and both took off into the direction the sound had come from, some hundred meters down the way.

Trying to be as quiet as he possibly could, Dylan quickly crossed the space that separated him from the other garden, carefully avoiding the spotlight on the street side of the fence. There were huge, artistically forged iron bars between one lot and the other. He had to hurry and leap over them exactly when the Nietzscheans had reached the spot furthest away from him. He made it though, undetected. When he estimated the guards to be heading back, he threw another stone, leading them away from his direction.

It was a tedious game they played, but he managed to cross all the way round the square, without getting caught.

_Nothing like a genetically enhanced hearing to help you make them fall for the oldest trick in the book_, Dylan sarcastically thought, lightly jogging ahead towards his destination.

When he finally reached the building he was searching for, he held on for a minute, contemplating it. Like all other houses in this obviously well-off area, it was surrounded by a vast garden behind impressive fences. It stood out three stores high, carrying as many little towers and decorations as it possibly could in a hideous attempt at Gothic architecture (actually all houses displayed one certain, extremely exaggerated ancient style or other, transforming the entire district in a monumental show of amazingly bad taste), completely dark in a striking, for Dylan yet most welcome contrast to the well-lit alley. Without further hesitation, Dylan silently moved on.


	9. Chapter 8

Gambit

Chapter 8

Something was wrong. He shifted in his bed, reluctant to opening his eyes. _Dammit, Tabea, you're a sweet girl, but your elbow is much too sharp to be resting on my face_, he thought. He tried pushing it aside and going back to sleep, but it didn't work.

„Tabea," he mumbled, „move the hell over, you're gonna put my eye out."

The pressure didn't go away, though. Instead he heard a cold, humourless laughter. He froze up on the spot. _Either Tabea has developped quite an impressive bass-baritone overnight, or this is not Tabea_, he thought groggily, by now no longer asleep, but much too frantic to open up his eyes.

„Raphael Valentine," he then heard the deep voice growl again. _Definitely not Tabea_. „I've got news for you: Tabea has already moved over, and you can take it as a fact that your eye will be history, if you don't start talking asap."

The lean, tall man on the bed cracked one lid open, peering cautiously into the darkness. He stared into a pair of angry, ice-cold eyes. The pressure under his right eye-socket was caused by a force lance firmly planted in his cheek.

„Dylan?" Raphael Valentine inquired slowly. „Dylan!" he then exclaimed as soon as he realized, that he really was staring into the face of his sister's comrade in arms. „Boy, am I glad to see you!"

The blue eyes narrowed puzzled, but continued to glare piercingly at the figure prone on the bed under them. However: the force lance withdrew, still lingering menacingly above his face, but no longer drilling into his cheek-bone.

„You are?" Dylan Hunt asked, sounding unconvinced.

„Of course I am," Rafe insisted. „Who do you think put up Mr Nietzschean Sarpedon, out of some idiot by some other idiot, proud owner of this extraordinary compound we are using right now, to start selling Beka's music, so that you might find us?"

The captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, who had been kneeling on the bed, stepped back and took a closer look at the man in front of him.

„You knew we'd come?"

„I certainly hoped so!"

„Why? What happened?"

Raphael Valentine shrugged his shoulders.

„It is a long, sad story," he confessed.

Dylan felt his stomach tighten up, a cold feeling descending upon him. His fist closed around Rafe's shirt and dragged him up.

„Make it short. I already searched the house from cellar to the attic. Beka's not here, Rafe. Where is she?" As he saw Beka's brother sagging forward, Dylan almost panicked. „WHAT HAPPENED?"

„There was this guy..." Rafe started, and Dylan felt the icy fist, that seemed to have taken up residence in the pit of his stomach, growing larger by each syllable. This was soo not a good way to start a story about Beka.

„I came across him on some bar on Infinity, the morning after Beka and I met..."

_Their dinner together had been a ball. Raphael Valentine couldn't recall to have had so much fun in quite a while. They talked, laughed, gossiped about everything and everyone, had a lot to eat, even danced a little,... and he definitely had too much to drink. The evening had turned out great._

_Next morning, however... Next morning was a different matter altogether. He woke up with a major hangover, his skull subject to a splitting headache of galactic proportions. Beka, who had as usual stayed sober, couldn't help laughing at her brother's predicament, but then took pity on him and suggested to go shopping on her own for the gifts she still had to buy for her friends back home. With only one more day to go and no ideas whatsoever as far as Dylan and Telemachus were concerned (she had found a superb necklace for Rommie during her very first hour on Infinity, and she had come up with three quite funky surfing shirts for Harper, along with a funny little pink hat for Doyle, a marvellous silk scarf for Rhade's wife and a huge box stuffed with toys and games and animated holodramas for the kids, but she still had four more presents to come up with, as she hadn't found anything suitable for Rev and Trance either), touring the shops promised to be rather stressful, so Rafe gratefully took her up on her offer. He settled himself down at the beach, while she took off on her errands._

_Resting, though, hadn't helped much with his headache. And then he remembered: liquids, lots of liquids helped. He made his staggering way to the beach bar, sat down on a shadowed table and ordered three bottles of soda... and some painkillers. It took a while, but half an hour later he was able to take a look around him and admire the view. The silvery-blue ocean, the golden sand, the palm-trees – and the impressive number of gorgeous ladies enjoying themselves among them helped a lot to improve his general well-being. His condition seemed pretty obvious, for soon he saw a nice looking chap about his age observing him with an indulgent, amused smile from a near-by table. Upon noticing that he had been spotted, the man raised his glas with soda in an amiable, mocking salute. Rafe couldn't help but laugh. Being a rather companionable, social guy himself, he picked up his glass and bottles and balanced them over to the other table._

„_Mind if I join you?"_

„_By all means," the other man replied, inviting him to sit down. „Especially as you seem well equipped to combat our mutual discomfort," he continued. „Hi, I'm John..."_

„_Raphael. Nice to meet you, John," Rafe replied, shaking the hand offered to him. He sat down and they started talking._

_In spite of being shrewd, clever and not at all too trustful, Beka's brother soon found himself rather pleased with his new acquaintance. He seemed very well-mannered, charming and intelligent, not overly extroverted, yet not holding back on much, either. There was however a certain reservation of some sort about him, a vague air of self-confident restrain Rafe found quite intriguing._

„_You're here on vacation?" he asked after a bit of small-talk on different kinds of subjects._

„_Sort of," John replied. „I was supposed to meet with one of my business partners here, but then I got word that he can't make it and wants me to come to Seneshall Drift by tomorrow evening. So I guess, I'm on vacation now, although I should start looking for a lift to Seneshall pretty soon."_

„_What are you meeting your business partner about?"_

„_Wow!" John exclaimed. „That's quite a blunt question to ask?"_

„_I'm sorry," Raphael offered with a grin, not sounding sorry at all. „If it's a secret..."_

„_Well, not really," the other man replied. „It's a touristic project, actually. Very promising, these days." Rafe nodded in agreement, sadly contemplating his glass. Having just payed thirty silver thrones for three bottles of plain water, just because it was being served on the terrace of a luxury resort on Infinity Atoll, he knew exactly what John was referring to._

„_I imagine though," he stated pensively, „that there aren't many places left for touristic exploitation."_

„_You're right," the man acquiesced, „but my friend has come up with something new entirely."_

_Rafe's eyebrows went up in an inquisitive, unconvinced expression._

„_No, really, a new planet. Beautiful, green, two suns, four very romantical moons, huge mountains with a lot of snow, blue seas, deep oceans, long beaches, strange flora and fauna, lots of unexplored nature, off the beaten track..."_

„_Sounds great," Rafe had to admit. „And the catch is...?"_

_John laughed out aloud:_

„_Lots of unexplored nature, off the beaten track?"_

„_Just how far ‚off the beaten track' are we talking about?"_

„_Very, very far off, indeed."_

„_Remote corner of the galaxy, lousy slipstream access, difficult gravital parameters?"_

„_Got it in one."_

„_I thought so."_

_It was Rafe who picked up the conversation again, after they had kept quiet for some seconds, both of them seemingly lost in their own thoughts._

„_That's funny, I have some business to attend to on Seneshall, as well. My sister's here on vacation and she has her ship along with her. She's due to leave tomorrow and has agreed to drop me off on her way home. I'm sure she could be talked into taking up another passenger – for a small fee, that is."_

„_What do you have in mind?"_

„_Three hundred thrones? In gold?"_

_John laughed good-humouredly._

„_A small fee, eh? Along with a nice provision for yourself?"_

„_Hey," Rafe's hands went up in defence, „a guy has got to make a living!"_

„_And while you're at it, why not make a good one, too?"_

„_She is an outstanding pilot!"_

„_I'm sure she is, mate, I'm sure she is..." Although John's smile still lingered on his lips, it didn't seem to make it to his eyes. Rafe noticed, and it should have warned him. But it didn't..._

_The deal was settled and they fixed a meeting for the next morning at the hotel's space bay, where the _Maru_ was docked. __When he told Beka about the transport deal he'd struck, she didn't seem too thrilled at the prospect of earning them both a quick and easy buck; it were moments like these that made him realize how much she'd changed over the years since joining the crew of the _Andromeda Ascendant_. With Beka finding a cause worth fighting for, new responsibilities, new friends – almost new family, the old chase for wealth had become less and less important to her. It tended to surface, now and then, but it was more of a fun treasure hunt than the traditional Valentine quest for a ‚good life' of leisure. Being second-in-command of the Commonwealth flag ship for so long now had added a lot of new facettes to Beka's personality. More at peace, more self-confident than ever, she had lost nothing of her former edge, her battle spirit or her wit. Her old insecurities, however, seemed to have disappeared completely, as if swallowed up by her successes, her victories and by the unconditioned support her friends provided her with. Rebekkah Valentine was home, as Rafe happily – and somewhat enviously – came to realize. It didn't mean, though, that she was now less loyal to him or the old friends and comrades; if called upon, she always would have helped anyone of them, even their strange, awkward, immoral Uncle Sid, but she didn't do it as unconditionally as she used to._

„_Do we really have to, Rafe? I mean... Look at your bags... You've got yourself plenty of cash now, don't you? Why do you need some more?"_

„_Oh, Beka, please, you know how it is..."_

„_Actually, I don't. So: tell me," Captain Rebbekah Valentine sternly demanded._

„_There was this job on Bebra, a couple of months ago... Anyway, it didn't work out as it should have, we all lost money, and the guy who hired us even lost a lot of it. And frankly, he doesn't really like to do so. The last two deals, the one with Sid and then the other on Castalia, that I was telling you about last night, went really well, but if I pay him back – and the interest rates I owe him – there won't be much left over. This money now really would come in handy..."_

_Raphael looked pleadingly to Beka, whose face clearly betrayed her reluctance to comply._

„_This guy you met," she finally asked him, „what do you know of him?"_

„_His name's John," Rafe lamely replied. Her reaction was exactly as he had expected._

„_Oh, great!" Beka exclaimed, her voice dripping with sarcasm. „Now there is a piece of information that could come in handy, should anything go wrong. _‚_Hey guys, we are looking for someone named John. Any ideas? __Yeah, sure. He is right over there, next to the one called Jim.'" Beka loudly blew out her breath in disdain. „Way to go, bro', really, way to go."_

„_Oh, come on, sis', it's just a lift. What could possibly happen?"_

_Beka threw him a quizzical look, yet refrained from summing up the impressive list of things that actually ‚could happen' and, from her experience, usually also did._

„_Look, Beka, when it comes to new acquaintances, I am as as cautious as the next person, you know that..." Rafe tried anew._

„_Maybe," she admitted, „maybe, Rafe. But you're not High Guard cautious."_

_It struck him like lightning. ‚High Guard cautious'. Yes, that was it, exactly. Rebbekah Valentine, **today's** Rebbekah Valentine was High Guard. Maybe not as much a thoroughbred as Hunt, not as ‚stiff upper-lipped' as Rhade, but High Guard, nontheless. The captain of the _Eureka Maru_ and her crew had come a long way since the day they had pulled out the _Andromeda Ascendant_ from the event horizon of a black hole. As daring and resourceful as ever, in time they had become reliable, quick, far-sighted and – if need be – lethally efficient. During their few and far between encounters over the past years, Rafe hadn't paid attention to it, at least not as much as he should have. But looking back in time, he came to the conclusion that this new dimension had been there from their first meeting onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, and it had grown ever since. Coming to think of it, by now Beka was to some degree even more ‚High Guard' than Telemachus or Dylan. There always was some helpless damsel in distress, some pretty face, humanitarian crisis, some sad story or other that could make Rhade, Hunt, sometimes even Harper to drop their guard. But Beka's upbringing, her childhood had provided her with a certain distant perspective on everything that was going on around her, one that all the other people seemed to lack. It helped her be a better judge of situations, of character, and it taught her never to let anyone pass across a certain level of intimacy. It was a lesson learned by heart, one that Rafe had also once known well. _

_But life had become less and less dangerous over the past years, last, but not least due to Beka's and her friends' incessant efforts. Standing in the middle of the action, Beka had stayed as sharp as always. Rafe, however, had come to take it easier, although his life seemed, judged by normal standards, as fast and furious as ever. It wasn't though, and so he started to forget his lessons. Little did he know that when this was over, both he and his sister would have to pay the price for his regrettable ‚lapsus'._

_As prices went, it was a high one – for a lesson they already knew._


	10. Chapter 9

Gambit

Chapter 9

„Look, Rafe, this is all very captivating, but could you just move on to the part regarding when and where you lost Beka?" Dylan Hunt sounded more than weary. Still standing in the darkness, he had listened to Raphael Valentine's story, while at the same time trying to make out any suspicious sounds. He periodically peered into the adjacent room, where he had gently laid down the woman he had found in bed with Rafe, after having stunned her.

„Okay," Raphael replied. „I'm getting there, I'm getting there..."

„Well, get there faster. I don't know how much time we have before someone comes barging in on us."

„Don't worry, no one will. I'm having the whole house to myself. They check up once a day, making sure I'm fine and haven't left. Other than that, I'm on my own."

„But for the girl!"

„But for the girl, agreed! But she is just a slave," Rafe stated in an indifferent tone.

_Just a slave? What the hell is going on with you?_ Dylan thought quite puzzled. He had known Beka's brother for several years now; he knew him as a clever, reckless, more often than not less than law-abiding, rather colourful character. But treacherous, cold, unfeeling Raphael was not.

„Oh, what the hell... Anyway: when John showed up at the _Maru_, it turned out he and Beka did know each other well..." Rafe Valentine continued.

_She had been waiting for them on the flight deck. The minute they stepped out of the elevator, her gauss gun seemed more or less to jump out of its holster and into her hand on its own. Pointing it steadily at John's head, Beka had started shouting at him with unprecedented urgency:  
„Goddammit, Rafe, what have you gotten us into this time? Close the airlocks, keep an eye on this guy and prepare for launch. We're leaving right away, and so you don't start wondering: we'll be heading directly back to the _Andromeda_, no Seneshall Drift, no nothing."_

_They left within a matter of moments. About half an hour later Beka had engaged the auto-pilot and had joined them at the bar. Rafe had kept his distance from John during the time they spent alone. Whatever was up, he wanted to hear it from Beka first._

„_Beka, what's the matter?" Rafe had wanted to ask the minute she had joined them, but before he could do so, John had started speaking:_

„_Hello, Rebekkah. You do not seem too pleased to see me?"_

_Her eyes had narrowed._

„_What did you expect? Last time we met, you tried to kill me, along with Dylan, Trance and Rhade and you almost managed to blow up the _Andromeda_."_

„_Yes, but as I see it, I had a damn' good reason. And, as in the end, you guys blew **my** ship up, I say we call it quits."_

„_It was an accident."_

„_I bet it was," he stated. „Still: I barely survived. By the time I was on my two feet again, everything was in pieces, and then you made it back and won the war and reconnected Tarn Vedra to known space. Looks like you had a run."_

„_What is it you want?"_

„_A lift to Seneshall?"_

„_What else?"_

„_That's all, I swear. Look, it was Rafe, who offered. I only found out later on in our conversation that he was your brother."_

„_He is right about that, Rocket," Rafe admitted, but Beka seemed not appeased at all._

„_But then you decided to come along, notwithstanding..." It was not a question._

„_Can you blame me for it? I was just so curious."_

„_Well, you know the old saying: curiosity kills the cat."_

„_Ahh! But cats have nine lives, have they not," he smiled._

„_Not anymore," Beka replied coldly, „but for Tarn Vedra they are extinct, you know."_

„_So lucky me I'm Seefran..."_

„_Seefran? What is 'Seefran'? Beka, what's going on?" Rafe hurriedly inquired._

„_It's a long, sad story," the other man answered, his eyes not leaving Beka's face for a single moment._

„_He's right, Rafe," Beka confirmed, „but this is not the time to tell you. First we have to get rid of this guy."_

„_Beka," Rafe then interrupted in a low voice, „I don't know, who the guy is, but it was really my idea; and if you think it better, than let's just drop him back on Infinity. But as we are already on our way – and he doesn't seem a threat – why don't you reconsider?" She seemed not to be moved, but he kept on nagging. And finally Beka's soft spot for him had taken over._

„_Okay, Rafe, Seneshall Drift. But you don't let him out of your sight. And you keep the gun at him. The minute we dock I want you and Jonah out, and I'll be on my way."_

_Raphael Valentine was pleased. It didn't last for long._

_Beka had disappeared into the cockpit, and he had spent the rest of their voyage in silence, under the amused gaze of the man he had come to know as John._

By now, Dylan was livid.

„Let me guess," he pressed through clenched jaws. „There was a ‚welcoming committee' awaiting you on Seneshall."

Rafe nodded in reply. „Indeed; all of it Drago-Katsov, about thirty of them. They boarded us the minute I opened up the airlock."

„I don't get it: I thought the guy was Seefran, not Nietzschean."

„I don't get either.He is not a Nietzschean, as isn't the guy he met with on the drift. Yet both seemed to command all Übers around with quite some authority. And they all obeyed them."

Dylan shook his head.

„Was John his real name?"

„He didn't say."

"The other guy' name?"

"Didn't say either."

„Was he also from Seefra?"

„How the hell should I know? I don't even know, what this Seefra is."

„You mean, nobody told you?"

„Nobody had the time. The minute they got us, Beka and I were separated and they brought us here. They didn't seem to want us any harm, but since I arrived, I didn't get to see either John nor his ‚business-partner'. Neither did I see Beka. Sarpedon told me that they had her somewhere around here, that they wanted to make her a business-offer she couldn't turn down, and that I was free to move everywhere on Myrmidon, as long as I don't send any messages and don't leave. Which I couldn't do anyway, since they also took the _Maru_ and I have no ship.After two days I started to wonder more and more..."

„It took you long enough..." Dylan couldn't refrain from saying, but then he remembered how he had wasted time and shut up, feeling guilty.

„Yes, but at least I came up with the plan of talking Mr Superior Idiot into selling Beka's cds on the Valparaiso flea-market, so that you might find them."

„Still, it was a lucky shot! Listen, Rafe, how long now until dawn?"

„About two more hours. Why? Do you have a plan?"

„As a matter of fact, I have. There is a slipfighter hidden just outside the city. As you can move freely, you stand a better chance to make it to it without rising suspicions. Take it and get back to the Andromeda. Tell Harper and Rommie what you just told me, and contact Rhade on Terrazed."

„What about you?"

„I'll stick around some more with my Nietzschean buddies. See, where they're keeping Beka and what they want from her."

„Why you and not me?"

„Because you didn't find out anything for more than a week now. If you disappear, it might cause some stirr-up. Maybe we get lucky, they make mistakes or let their guard drop..."

„Like this is going to happen. Dylan, they're Drago-Katsov."

„Still, it's our only shot." Seeing the disapproval on Raphael's face, Dylan threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. „Okay, all right! You have a better idea? Some miraculous plan B?"

„No," Rafe reluctantly admitted.

„Well, then, plan A will just have to do. Now move," he urged him, handing him over one of his forcelances and the flexi with the map showing the way back to the slipfighter.

For just one second both men stood in silence, watching one another.

„I'm sorry, Dylan," Raphael then pleaded, extending his hand towards him. „Find her for me, will you?"

„We'll get her back, don't worry," Dylan smiled accepting the hand he had been offered, his voice displaying a confidence he didn't feel at all. He remained there in the overstuffed bedroom for a moment, regarding Beka's brother disappear into the darkness of the garden, then followed him through the window, vanishing in the thick foliage outside.

For the next quarter of an hour, the captain just kept searching for the best spot to hide and still observe the house, where sometime during the next hours someone was due to check on Raphael Valentine. Finally finding it beneath a thick, dark-green bush of enormous proportions, Dylan settled down on his belly, trying to make himself as comfortable as possible and bracing himself for a long wait.

_Hold on, Beka, hold on_, he silently prayed. _We'll get you out of this!_ Or so he hoped, at least.

--------

TBC Feedbacks are highly appreciated.


	11. Chapter 10

Gambit

Chapter 10

_I'm too old for this_, Dylan wearily thought as the day was slowly progressing towards noon. Rafe had been right. For hours and hours there was no move, no sound, nothing other than the distant noises of the street and the garden. In spite of the stillness, he did though keep quiet, staying almost immobile in the position he had once adopted. As the hours streched on and on, he tried to flex and relax his muscles and shift his weight about in infinitesimal movements, as he began to feel more and more sore. While he had a farely good view of the house and garden, his hearing was somewhat distracted by the various natural sounds around him. So he didn't dare to change his position too drastically too often, as he wasn't sure that there was really no one nearby. And with superior Nietzschean senses one really never knew.

By noon, however, Dylan decided that he would definitively change position, before becoming too stiff to move at all. But bythen it was too late.

As he was carefully getting to his knees, incredible noise suddently erupted from the house. A loud, ear-piercing siren began to howl through the entire area, starting low with a humming staccato that soon developped into a deafening shriek. It only took seconds before the forged portals to the street were run down by guards barging into the garden and moving towards the house, their guns drawn, an officer barking orders to the left and right. While five of the Nietzscheans entered the house, other four dispersed themselves throughout the garden, each of them guarding one corner of the building, as Dylan suspected, who could see three of them from his hiding place. The captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ just froze on the spot.

But a couple of minutes later he noticed the tall, imposing officer, who had entered the house along with the guards, hurrying out of it again, dragging the woman Rafe had been with by her hair behind him. Dylan almost softly cursed under his breath. The girl was screaming and kicking, desperately trying to get away from her Nitzschean tormentor, who didn't even look at her while going down the few steps that separated the housedoor from the gravel way that led to the lane. _Goddammit, Dylan, how could you forget about her?_ the Vedran asked himself desperately, his fingers clutching around his force lance as he helplessly watched the woman being thrown down on the lane.

„Why didn't you call us?" the officer shouted down on the girl, loud enough for Dylan to hear (_Hell, loud enough to hear for the entire solar system_, Hunt thought upon listening to him), his foot kicking viciously against her hip.

„I... I did..." the girl sobbed between her arms, that were placed around her head, while her body curled up into a foetal position.

„Why didn't you call us **sooner**?" the Nietzschean insisted, seemingly unimpressed by the sorry sight in front of him.

„I didn't notice... I woke late... and he was gone... I thought he'd be back, but then..." her voice broke and she resumed to crying in silence.

„You are a useless piece of trash," the soldier then concluded, drawing a knife from his belt and proceeding towards her.

Behind his bush, Dylan was just about ready to march right into the scene.

After six years spent in chaos, disorder, harshness and injustice, six years that, to his eyes, had changed beyond recognition the young man born and raised in the security and calmness of a rich, cultivated world at peace, that had educated him for a position of responsibility and care and compassion; after six years of watching an universe throwing everything Dylan believed in into history's garbage can, that young man he once was had just turned around and silently walked away from him. He had been a soldier, an officer, a warrior even before the Fall. But it was different then. Fights then were less about winning wars than about winning peace. The High Guard came, saw and won, and then they started building civilization, offering security and peace and justice and... yes, even comfort. Imperialism, colonialism? Maybe, but also technology and education and quite a lot of freedom to make one's own life happy. It surely wasn't perfect, but it was as perfect as things could get when enormous numbers of individuals with different backgrounds, cultures and traditions were involved. And the things less perfect, they could be worked on slowly. That was what the High Guard was meant to achieve. And while the soldiers securing and promoting this 'harbour of perfection' were all highly efficient,if need be deadly warriors, they mainly appeared as compassionate, considerate protectors, respected, even loved by the peoples of the Commonwealth, yet never too visible to the public eye and firmly controlled by both politics and legislation. In spite of being already in his late thirties when the Fall occured, Dylan Hunt looked back upon the man he was then as if he were some boy, who thought life is a ball. He'd been a beloved child, a popular guy in school, a promising student, a successful officer. A 'good kid', basically. A loving family, a wonderful home, lots of friends... and girl friends, achievements, recognition and finally true love, none of this requiring too much effort to attain. And so he had managed to reach maturity without really ever growing up at all. No need for too much struggle, no need for too much brooding, no need for getting used to uglier sides of life. And then it all had ended. Waking up after 303 years of barbarism, he had to start learning at high speed that life was no fun at all. And the unforgiving universe he had woken up to proved itself a good teacher: civil war declared practically as a good way of living for most systems of the three galaxies, Nietzschean prides hunting down all weaker peoples and at each others' throats, Magog closing in, Kalderans on the warpath, Ogami hired out as bounty hunters for the highest bidder, money the only value left around to govern the universe, equal laws for everyone long gone, as were proper jurisdiction, efficient administration, well-fare and law-enforcement. However, after six years at war with forces of an evil he had been taught to think of as impossible, six years of loss and struggle and despair, Dylan Hunt was surprised to find out that he had still not gotten used to certain aspects of life after the Fall. Watching sentient beings, be they human or not, being treated as objects to be disposed of at will, was certainly one of these aspects.

However, as he already got up and prepared to launch himself at the Nietzscheans, a „consequences-be-damned" look upon his face, he suddently noticed a broad-shouldered, tall frame approaching the two protagonists of the scene he had come to witness. The man was facing the house and had his back turned towards Hunt, yet Dylan thought to recognize something of a familiar air about him.

„Yvain, hold it!" The man's baritone voice was not loud, but firm and rich... and pleasant. He reached down to the woman and placed an arm under her elbow, helping her to her feet. „There is no need to get rough with her, that won't bring Valentine back any sooner!"

The girl scrambled to her feet and watched the newcomer with fearful eyes behind a thick curtain of dark curls that fell over her face.

„Would now be soon enough?" a cheerful voice was heard. The trio was quite startled, as was Dylan himself. From the other side of the lane, a smiling, tranquil Raphael Valentine came into sight, carelessly strolling nearer, while his eyes were throwing casual glances all over the place. „My, my!" he exclaimed. „Must I feel touched? Don't tell me all these guards are here on my account?"

„We've been told, you were missing."

„My dear John, I assumed that I could go whereever I wish, as long as it is on Myrmidon," Rafe replied, his eyebrows up in an quizzical expression, his tone mildly ironical.

„That's right," the man confirmed. „Tabea just thought..."

„Ah, yes, Tabea! Well," Beka's brother approached the girl and cupped her still trembling chin in one of his hands, „my lovely, I thought I told you not to worry if I drop out of sight." His voice sounded lazy, yet there was an unmistakeable coldness beneath it that Dylan didn't miss. „I was out looking for my host. Midmornings he is usually at the central gymnasium on Kutusov Boulevard. I didn't find him, though."

„He will be back tomorrow. He is away on business, on Valparaiso I believe. I thought that you were informed," the human wondered.

„It must have slipped my mind," Rafe excused himself.

„Why were you looking for him?"

„Oh, yes," the woman hastly interrupted. „Master Raphael wanted to ask for some holodramas. I forgot all about it." She turned to Rafe. „I'm sorry, Master!" A thoughtful expression on his face, Valentine regarded her silently, yet pleased. But then he shrugged his shoulders and turned again towards „John". „Now that this whole misunderstanding has been settled... Would you like to join me for a light lunch?"

„No, thank you. Our business talks with Beka have not been concluded. I must return to her," the man refused politely.

„Of course," Rafe conceded. „How is Beka, by the way?" he then asked casually.

„Busy... and a little tired, but quite fine otherwise. I'm sure she'll join you soon. She sends you her regards."

„Oh, really? I thought that you - and consequently Beka - thought thatI was missing?... Ah, never mind. Tabea, come, my dear! John, I'll be seeing you, but right now I'm starving. My compliments to Beka," Raphael nodded curtly and turned towards the house.

The others stood in silence, watching the humans walk away. In a matter of minutes the guards from in and outside the house had gathered on the lane, standing to attention.

„Sir, shall we remain here?" the officer inquired.

„No," the man replied. „I don't think, it's necessary. But have two soldiers patrol the street on a regular basis every hour or so."

The Nietzschean nodded his understanding and led his men away, without further questions.

His head bowed, the tip of his shoe absently playing with a small stone in the grass, the man seemed lost in thought. But then he straightened up and turned towards the street. For the first time Dylan got to see him up front. He was almost as tall as the captain himself, yet slightly more massive, with a handsome, round face, a sensuous mouth and dark brown eyes, that somehow seemed to laugh, contrasting with light brown, short curls that covered his scalp like a cap. He looked pleasant enough, yet behind his bush Dylan broke into a sweat and stared at the walking man with his eyes opened wide. Only after he had disappeared into the street, did Hunt bring a slightly shaking hand up to his forehead, wiping away the sweat.

---

The curtain behind him moved but slightly, yet it was enough to let Raphael raise his head. He sat in an armchair placed nest to a lamp in a spacious, richly adorned living room, studying a flexi .

„What took you so long?" he asked sharply, without even turning his head around.

Not bothering to answer, Dylan Hunt came around the armchair and stood next to him, towering menacingly above the slender man.

„What happened?"

„The city is practically secluded. I couldn't even get near the outskirts."

„Why? Did they find the slipfighter?"

„No, I don't think so. But they know that someone has managed to come through the planetary defense system. All security personnel is on high alert."

„Oh, sh...!" Grinding his teeth, the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ started pacing up and down like some caged animal. Rafe watched him in silence, his eyes dark and somber. He sighed.

„However...," he then started.

„You have an idea?" The look that met his eyes showed Rafe that Dylan was at his witts' ends and rapidly approaching the limits of his patience.

„I think that I've found Beka," Rafe slowly answered him, raising to his feet. It stopped the other man dead in his tracks.

„Where..." his voice was but a whisper. „Where is she? Did you see her?" he then started anew after clearing his throat.

„No, her I didn't see. But four blocks down the street there is another house quite similar to this one. As I went for a walk during the past days, it looked as inconspicuous as all the others. Today though it was guarded..."

„Maybe some high placed clan chef..."

„No, it was heavily guarded. Exactly on the day, when they go beserk because someone broke through their planetary defenses. Some business talks, my ass!" The two men watched each other in mutual understanding.

„Look, Dylan, I might be wrong, of course. But it's our best shot, I believe."

„So, what do you suggest?"

„We try anew tonight. You try to get to Beka and I go for the fighter. I'll take Tabea with me."

„But they are on alert now."

„You can't go into hiding for days on Myrmidon, waiting for things to cool down. The longer you stick around, the more likely is it that you will get caught. They already know that someone came through. How long, do you think, until their spies tell them that the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ is not onboard his ship?"

„They can't know that I'm here," Dylan stubbornly replied, just for the sake of the argument. Rafe merely rolled his eyes.

„They know your XO's here. Do you really believe, they'll think you on vacation?"

„No," the Vedran quietly admitted. He sat down on a sofa, stretching his legs and rubbing his eyes tiredly. „You're right. I'm sorry, Rafe, I was just being obnoxious."

„Yes," Rafe solemnly nodded. „Beka told me about this tendency of yours."

In spite of his worry, Dylan couldn't refrain himself from flashing Rafe a lopsided grin.

„She did, eh?" The smile, however, faded, as he met Valentine's eyes. „This guy..." he began wearily.

„You know him?" Dylan nodded.

„His name is Jonah Draeger. On Seefra he was running the largest cargo and transportation company of the entire system."

„There is that Seefra thing again," Rafe sighed exasperated. Dylan shook his head.

„It's a rather long story. When the Vedrans cut Tarn Vedra off, they created an entire system of nine planets and an artificial sun. When Trance tesseracted us, we ended up all in the system, but she mixed up our... times of arrival. She was there for ten years, Harper ‚but' for three, Rhade nine months and I only a week before we found Beka. She had been adrift for six months on the borders of the system, running out of food, water and fuel, unable to reach one of the planets. Per chance she found the _Andromeda_, who was dead in space, just like the _Maru_. Unfortunately, so did Jonah Draeger, who claimed her as salvage. And with Beka being the only one who knew, what to do with _Andromeda_..." his voice trailed off.

„Were they... I mean... Were they, you know, together?..." Rafe cautiously asked.

„For about a month..." Dylan answered promptly. „Before we found her, that is. I mean, she was starving. He was rich and handsome, and he seemed quite pleasant..."

„Rich, handsome, seeming pleasant, a business tycoon and a jerk at heart... Sounds just like Beka's cup of coffee. You don't have to explain," Rafe sadly concluded.

Dylan shook his head. Raphael Valentine had expressed exactly his own thoughts, when he had first come across Beka onboard the _Andromeda_. He could vividly remember the hurt and anger he had felt then. The more surprised was he by the urge he felt to defend Beka's actions in front of her brother, who – by the way – didn't sound at all accusing, as he was forced to admit.

„He offered her a partnership. She accepted. When I got onboard they caught me, dragged me along to Draeger. She was with him, I was unconscious, she didn't tell him, who I was. He found out by himself. And then he tried to make her kill me, which didn't work out as he expected. So then he launched a missile to destroy the _Andromeda_ and kill all onboard. And then he forced her to choose between him and us, and Beka stayed, although reluctantly. She didn't trust him, didn't trust us anymore. She resented me... And yet, she stayed and tried to save us. Ultimately, Trance saved us again. She powered _Andromeda_ up enough to enable us to launch a counter-missile, Drager's ship got caught in the explosion, we thought him dead. End of story." Rafe contemplated the silent, tired man thoughtfully.

„She resented you?"

„She thought I had abandoned her, that I had risked all our lives for nothing. She said..." again, his voice seem to dry up. „She said I was making her feel dispensable..."

Raphael Valentine shook his head, suddently understanding.

"She says a lot, when angry. She seldom means it, though."

"Oh, she meant it, all right. And she was right, you know?"

„And this is about showing her, that she is not... dispensable?"

„She never was," Dylan violently protested. „I... I had no choice... On Arkology, there were so many, who needed to be saved, although they didn't want it. Beka thought I was stupid. And she simply left me. I couldn't walk away, not without trying to save them. But when it became clear that we were losing the battle, I listened to Trance... and then I walked away." Dylan's voice was now nothing but a pained whisper. "I left them all to die, Harper, Rommie, Rhade, somehow telling myself that if Beka could do it, then so could I. Why not? You see," he pleaded softly, searching for Rafe's eyes, "she stood by me ever since the day we met, no matter what. I had come to think of her as just... another me, almost." He sighed in a lost manner. "With her gone it was like... I too was gone already. I know, I'm not making sense, but I can't explain it any better."

The other man watched him intently, understanding.

"You took her for granted." It was not a question. He sighed upon seeing Dylan's troubled features. "Dylan, I'm but her brother. I am not her father. You ran, and she deserted..."

"Actually no, she didn't. She came back, held the line, but by then it was too late. I was in a slipfighter and couldn't escape the tidal forces of the Route, Arkology was breaking apart, the _Andromeda_ went for the Worldship..."

Rafe had no idea, what the man in front of him was talking about. It obviously was painful, disturbing, even haunting. But this was not the time and place to sort it out. _And I'm not the right person_, Beka's brother thought.

"Whatever happened between you, you don't have to justify yourself to me. But if the two of you haven't yet discussed this through, it might be a good idea to tell **her** what you told me, when we get her back."

"What if we don't?" Dylan's fist came down on a nearby table.

„Easy!" Rafe admonished him. „We're not getting her back by breaking furniture!"

„I'll get her back by all means whatsoever!" the older man forcefully stated and raised to his feet.

Rafe couldn't help but smiling. „That's it! That's the spirit! Do you know how Draeger ended up with the Drago-Khatzov?"

„No, I don't have a clue."

„Never mind. We'll sort it out later." A glance outside showed Rafe that the suns had set.

"Have you eaten something?"

"Power bars and plenty of protein liquids."

„I think it's time, then. You're ready?" Dylan only nodded. Rafe picked up the flexi he had been holding, when Dylan had entered the room. „Here's the map I made. The house is marked, but you'll probably see the guards anyway. Stay safe, Dylan."

„I will." The curtain slightly moved, and then he was gone.


	12. Chapter 11

Gambit

Chapter 11

She never had a liking for stately homes on planets. As first officer of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ she'd had her fair share of them, especially during the last year or so, when official receptions, celebrations and ceremonies had seen them flying around from one fancy meeting to another, most of them held in somptuous, snobbish places. They all were huge and drafty and so much not like the _Maru_. This here was no exception: if anything, it was even more lavishly decorated, overstuffed with furniture and curtains and works of art, Nietzschean style, of course. Which meant that it displayed – in contrast to the mainly democratic, thus more simple Commonwealth aesthetics – a lust for decoration ranging from furs of extinct wild animals and torches, more appropriate for caves, to items of roccoco-like delicacy, gilded tables and chairs that Beka suspected to come crashing down the minute a typical Nietzschean Alpha would have attempted to use them. But after what she'd been through in this last month since Jonah had taken her and Rafe, the pilot was almost happy to be back in this ‚wilhelminian' nightmare.

The last couple of days since their return to Myrmidon had been rough, rougher than usual. A look into one of the large, Venetian mirrors hanging on the wall across her seat proved Beka that her face showed the hardships she had experienced. She looked haggard, tired, her hair hanging lifelessly in matted, sweatty blond and black braids on her shoulders, her skin a deadly shade of grey. Her eyes, however, were almost back to normal. _Thank the Gods for small mercies_, she thought with slight sarcasm. The physical ordeal this time had been less painful than she remembered. But it had taken an immense toll on her not to end it sooner, knowing that at any time she had the ability to do so. It had been an enormous display of sheer will-power and had left her mentally exhausted.

She left the remnants of her supper on the dining-table and walked over to the fire-place, where she snuggled herself into a huge armchair. It was placed next to a beautifully made playing table with a set of chess on it. It was just about the only piece in the whole room that Beka found somewhat appealing, with a board carved out of black and white marble squares and pieces made of real ebony wood and crystal, weighing heavily in her hand. Knowing that no one would disturb her further this evening, Beka allowed herself to relax into the cushions of the armchair. She sadly contemplated the figure in her hand, a knight on horseback, with his sword drawn and in a sparkling crystal armour that reflected the flames of the fire-place. She used to love chess, once.

_About one week after he had resumed command of the _Andromeda_ after their battle with the Worldship, Dylan had presented her with a superb rosewood box containing an exquisitely carved chess set. Along with it came a book, bound in soft dark leather. She feared it might be in Vedran or English or some of those other old-fashioned languages. But it was in Common: _Through the Looking Glass.

„_A ‚thank-you'?" she had asked him, mischieviously smiling. He shook his head._

„_Just a story about someone you remind me of."_

„_Who is it?"_

„_A little girl, too curious to just stay put, when told so, never frightened of a new adventure and brave enough to battle two evil queens at once." She laughed._

„_What queens?"_

„_Why, the black and the white queen, of course," he said pulling the two figures out of the wooden box._

„_That's lovely, Dylan, thank you. But I'm afraid I don't know how to play this game."_

„_Ask Rommie. Among other things, she also is a grand master of chess."_

„_And you're not?" Dylan grinned embarrassed._

„_Unlike Go, that is mainly a game of war, chess is foremost a game of life. It... scares me, a little..." he confessed. „So when I saw this on Terrazed, I thought it was perfectly fitting for you." _

_Beka was quite puzzled._

„_Oh? And why is that so?"_

„_Easy: you scare me too, sometimes," Dylan had replied, escaping laughingly before she could place more than just one punch against his biceps, leaving Beka grinning widely on Obs deck._

_She followed his advice and soon became quite an expert at chess. It was sort of addictive. She could spend hours playing along with Rommie, who obviously was an outstanding contrahent. But Beka enjoyed the challenge, and although as a novice she always ended up losing, she took pride in becoming more and more difficult to beat._

_Months later, however, after losing again to Rommie at the end of one of their ‚girls' nights' - the last before Trance left them - she went away to store the game set. When she got back, she heard that Trance and Rommie were discussing her playing skills. She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but she couldn't help it._

„_She's getting quite good at that," Trance had stated._

„_Yes, there were three times, when she could have reversed the outcome," Rommie stated._

„_Not really," Trance disagreed._

„_What do you mean? Of course she could have!"_

„_Yes, if she would have made a gambit."_

„_Oh well, she'll learn, sooner or later."_

_Trance didn't seemed convinced._

„_Chess is a game of life, Rommie."_ What's with this ‚game of life' thing?_ Beka thought quite annoyed._

„_So?" Rommie had inquired._

„_Beka is not the type. Didn't you see how she refused to give up on any rook, on the knight. She fought for every pawn, risking the queen for them."_

„_Well, yes, I mean, she's Beka, she just doesn't ever leave..."_

„...c_rew members behind," Trance had concluded dryly._

„_You say that as if it's a bad habit."_

„_No, of course not, but what happens if one day she just might have to make this gambit?"_

„_Trance, is this still about chess?" The golden being shrugged._

„_Probabilities..." _

_Rommie looked at her sharply._

„_Trance, you know that I like you; you know, I am your friend?" Trance silently nodded. "However," Rommie went on, „this cryptic side of you I do find most annoying. Is there something you want to tell me?" Receiving no reply, Rommie insisted:_

„_Something you don't want to tell, that I should know about, nonetheless?"_

„_There are more fights ahead of you," Trance admitted reluctantly. An ironic look an her face, Rommie merely shrugged her shoulders._

„_What else is new? I am a warship. There always will be fights."_

„_This time it will be Beka who must decide in the end."_

„_It happened before. And she was awesome," Rommie said casually, yet unable to hide a small hint of pride about her XO in her voice._

„_She didn't have to decide whom to sacrifice." The avatar just sighed._

„_What are you saying, Trance?"_

„_I'm saying that it was a miracle we all made it through until now."_

„_Not of all us," Rommie reminded her with a sad look in her eyes._

„_Yes, well, Tyr made his own decisions. While miracles do happen, they seldom become routine. The point is, next time around we might not be this lucky. And it will be Beka, who will have to decide." _

_The expression on the avatar's beautiful face clearly showed that she didn't like the direction this discussion was heading to one bit._

„_We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Trance," she firmly replied, her tone indicating that, at least for now, she wanted the matter closed._

_Beka thought it high time for her to re-enter the scene._

„_This fight, Trance," she inquired, casually strolling in._

„_Beka!" the two women exclaimed, equally astonished. She smiled._

„_For someone, who knows so much about future things, you surely look surprised, Trance. So, this fight," she insisted._

„_I don't know, Beka, really. I only know it's about you. And with you being The One..."_

_The pilot rolled her eyes._

„_If by ‚The One' you mean this Nietzschean Matriarch-business..." She looked from one of her friends to the other, both seemed not at ease. „Oh, come on, guys, until now it worked out just fine..."_

„_There are the Drago-Khatzov," Rommie objected dryly._

„_And Bengal and Asturian and Omayyad and Toltec. I know. But then there are others, who are coming around. And others who just won't. We'll have to live with it."_

„_What if we can't?" Trance asked._

„_So, basically you're saying that we will have to force some of the prides into the Commonwealth?"_

„_Basically, I'm saying that there will be a fight. Maybe it's somewhat different. Maybe the independent prides will try to get the other ones to leave the Commonwealth. Either way, it will be you who will have to take care of it."_

„_And I will only be able to' take care of it' by sacrificing... what? I mean, this was about a gambit, was it not? What it is? A principle? An ideal? A secret? What?"_

_Trance's obsidian dark eyes glowed like charcoals on a fire. Beka by now was no longer annoyed, she was downright angry, while Rommie merely resigned herself to observing the two arguing ladies._

_Beka's eyes grew wide._

„_Somebody? A person? It that it, Trance? Are you superior beings from elevated spheres requiring... human sacrifices? Again?" The _Maru_'s captain sounded bitingly ironic. „And who do you suggest?"_

„_It will be up to you," Trance admitted quietly. „And Beka: we're not requiring. No one is. It just might be that things will turn out this way. It might be only Rommie... or Doyle..."_

_While the Andromeda's avatar stood as still as a statue, Beka simply exploded._

„_**Only** Rommie? They are our friends, Trance!"_

„_Beka," Rommie said, „that was a mere suggestion."_

„_But why you two in the first place? Why not Harper?" she asked, pleased to see Trance wince. She knew that Trance would rather see all universes come to pieces than contemplate to lose Harper. Watching Trance's eyes well up with sorrow, she felt sort of triumphant. And though she knew that she had proven her point and should have left it there, she couldn't stop herself. „You know what? I could always suggest Rhade. It might be just as well: I mean, he is a Nietzschean, he'll do just what I tell him. There is of course this small matter of his wife and children and him trusting me – and you, by the way," Beka shot Trance a vicious look. „There is ,of course, another option." Trance closed her eyes wearily, expecting the blow to come._

„_Why not take Dylan? I mean, he is Paradine. Who knows? He might just make it. And you always said it was his destiny to save all and everybody. So why not let him do it? He's lost so much already, what does it matter then if he also loses his life over it?" Beka could sense Rommie watching her horrified. And yet she still went further, a red mist of fury blurring her sight. Knowing that in all those years they had spent together Trance had – time and again – saved them, helped them, healed them, seemed no longer to matter. Since before Arkology, almost since before her possession by the Abyss Beka had felt herself being thrown to one side or another by forces she could not control, almost not comprehend. And she had come to see Trance as a representant of those forces she so much resented. A friendly, benevolent emissary, maybe, but still... For more than two years she had experienced herself and her friends being thrown around like pebbles hit by waves, and she was sick of it. With the Worldship gone, she had thought it over. That now it threatened to surface once again, made Beka white with fury, tearing down the walls behind which she had carefully restrained her outrage for so long._

„_Come on, Trance, let's take Dylan," she taunted her once more. _

„_Beka..." Rommie threw in, a warning in her voice. But Beka was way past caring. _

_When the dark eyes reopened, Captain Valentine, the ‚dare-all/fear-none' pilot backed away two steps. There was no longer fire or life or any compassion in those large orbs that Beka thought to know so well. As Trance elegantly gained her footing, Beka and Rommie could only look in amazement at this complete stranger they saw in front of them._

„_I didn't want to decide myself. I didn't want you to decide **now**," Trance told them in a low, soft voice. „But, since you insist..." She had left it open and simply turned and left. They watched her leave, mouth agape._

„_You don't think...?" Beka ventured no further with her question._

„_I don't know. I hope not," Rommie had forcefully replied, her hand softly squeezing Beka's shoulder, whether to comfort her or find herself some comfort, she couldn't tell herself._

_They had left it there._

_The next day, Trance was leaving. They all met in Hydroponics, and everything seemed all right. The crew was saddened, of course, but they knew that their golden ‚good luck'-charm was not going forever. And so they joked and laughed and said their final fare-wells. And then they left for duty, and it was only Beka who turned around one last time. And there stood Trance, a strange look on her face, on her up-turned palm a small knight on an armoured horse. Her eyes were blank and distant. Beka recognized the same look like the one she had seen the night before. And then Trance nodded imperceptibly to her:_

„_Dylan it is, then..." and before Beka could respond, she was simply gone , leaving nothing but a soft shade of golden light behind her._

Rebbekah Valentine never again played chess.


	13. Chapter 12

Gambit

Chapter 12

In the fire-place the flames were dying. A faint beam of light seldomly carressed the face of the woman sound asleep in her armchair. She looked at peace, maybe a little tired, but other than that just fine. For an instant, he stood there in silence, studying her face, the feeling of relief washing over him so great that he almost felt his knees weakening. Himself a very light sleeper, he wondered a little that she hadn't woken up yet; on the other hand, he really had taken care of moving around as soundlessly as possible. Shaking himself out of his contemplation, he walked over to her, knelt down next to the armchair and placed a hand across her lips, lightly enough to not cause pain or choking, yet strongly enough to wake her up and prevent her from crying out loud in astonishment.

„Beka, wake up, Beka!"

Her eyes opened up widely, focusing almost immediately on his face and growing even larger with recognition. Smiling, he took his hand away.

„Keep quiet," he then whispered. „Come on, we must move quickly..."

„Dylan..."

„Later, Beka! We have to get out fast. The place is crawling with guards. They changing shifts every two hours. I had to take one out and then spent half an hour looking for you in this... rabbit hole. We have but one hour left to get out of here the way I got in, before they find him."

Without further ado he stood up again, taking her hand into his own and turning to leave. It was only a couple of steps later when, his outstretched arm meeting with resistance, he noticed that she didn't follow. He turned around to face her, a puzzled look on his face.

„Dylan, wait! What are you doing here?"

„What do you mean? What does it look like? I've come to take you home. Come on now, hurry up. Where do we find the _Maru_?"

„Stop! You have got to leave now." He scrutinized her sharply.

„Beka, are you all right?"

„Of course I'm all right. I just don't want to leave. And you just have to go."

„What? You mean: without you?"

„Yes. I want to stay."

He looked at her dumbfolded. Now that he had not expected. Their eyes locked, hers determined, his not understanding.

„Beka, what's going on? We've been worried sick..."

„Oh yes, in fact so worried that, in spite of _Andromeda_'s skills and resources, it took you a month to get here..." she bitterly complained. Her outburst didn't help much: if anything, he looked even more confused.

„A month...? But..."

„Oh, hold your breath, Dylan. You didn't give a damn. And now you're here because of some crisis that has probabaly occured, reminding you of the fact that you might need your XO, a good pilot, whatever... Get out of here! Just go!" She met his glare straightforward, her eyes a polished, blank surface of ice, betraying nothing of what was going on inside her. He looked as if she'd slapped him.

„You don't mean that!"

„Oh no? How would you know? Get going," she ordered once again, her arms hanging down at her sides, her fists clenched together. _Oh gods_, she thought in panic, _why doesn't he ever listen? Now he will start arguing and if they find him here..._ _And he will not listen, like he never does..._ She was right, of course. His eyes darkened with anger.

„Is it Jonah?"

It took her by surprise. How long had he been here? What did he know, in fact? She jumped at the occasion.

„What if it is? It is none of your business."

„None of my business? Beka, the guy... he tried to kill you... Kill all of us, in fact!"

„Oh well, we talked it over," she answered, rather vaguely. He laughed out in disdain.

„Really? Let me guess: there is some deal you two struck, involving his investments, you as the Matriarch and the Drago-Khatzov, him getting very wealthy, you getting very spoiled and them getting all-mighty... Something along those lines? This other guy, who is it?" His voice dripped with sarcasm.

She looked at him in silence. His face was white with anger. She sighed. And then she dropped the acting.

„Oh, very well. I don't know, how much you know. But fact is, they have me, they do have the _Maru_ and they have Rafe, as well. I can't just leave my ship and my brother behind; and as they have them, they won't need you to blackmail me. So they will simply kill you, if they find you here. And no matter what we do, what marvelous plan you have come up with," she stated, an ironic smirk upon her face, "there is just no way we could all get out of here safe and sound and in one piece. Would you now just leave, please?" she insisted in despair, forcefully grabbing his arm and trying to turn him around and push him towards the opened door to the balcony, obviously the way he had used to get in. A rather futile attempt, considering his size. Relief and understanding washed over his face.

„Oh, Beka..." he began, but never got to finish. The lamps suddently flashed up, lightning up the place as the doors on both sides of the room banged open, four guards storming in through each of them with their guns drawn.

His hand flew to his force lance, but stopped short before reaching for it. It was no use, there were too many soldiers surrounding them already, and Beka had no weapon. His arms went up in surrender, while he saw Beka closing her eyes with fury, pressing her lips together.

„Captain Hunt!" The pleasant male voice made him turn around towards the door at his back. A smiling Jonah Draeger was standing in the door frame. „You should have listened to her," he said, gesturing towards Beka. She practically threw herself between him and her captain.

„Jonah, listen to me! He can't really harm you. You have me, you have Rafe. You really do not need him. Just let him go, please!" she spurted out in a hurry, the tone of her voice pleading, yet already desperate, as she knew that she won't get her way on this. But she had to try.

Jonah's hand reached out for her, his index stroking softly along the lines of her cheek.

„I can't do this, Rebbekah. You see, the truth is that I need him. He helped Rafe escape."

Relief was clearly written all over her face, but just one moment later worry replaced it quickly. As she turned around, her eyes showed nothing but grief.

„Dylan, why didn't you tell me?"

„I was just about to..." He briefly closed his eyes. _Why didn't you tell her first thing, you fool?_ he silently thought in anger. _Harper is right: when it comes to Beka, I just simply lose it._ It was too late to change anything about it now.

„Ah, yes, this is quite touching. However, I think that we should proceed," Jonah said abruptly. „Take him," he curtly nodded to two of the guards. As they were firmly gripping Hunt's arms, turning them backwards and forcing him ahead, Jonah approached Beka and lightly took her arm.

„Let's go to the _Maru_," he mildly suggested. She looked at him, then nodded and followed Dylan out.


	14. Chapter 13

Okay, at last the next update. Thanks to everyone for all the reviews.

Chapter 13

They were keeping up a swift pace, closely following Draeger and Beka , who in turn were hurrying towards a landing pad that held the heavily guarded _Eureka Maru_ in a far corner of the compound. The ‚they' in question being Dylan and half a dozen Nietzschean soldiers under the command of an officer Jonah had earlier referred to as ‚Yvain' who were urging the _Andromeda_'s captain forward through a regular series of pushes and prods with the barrels of their weapons. They didn't really hurt him, but it was highly unpleasant.

Seeing the two humans disappear into the _Maru_, the Nietzscheans sped up their walk. When Dylan didn't comply immediately, he found himself once more thrust forward by prod from a gun connecting with his ribs.

„Careful," he admonished them, hurrying up the gangway towards the _Maru_, „I do bruise easily, you know!"

"Ah, Captain Hunt!" exclaimed Jonah, who waited for them at the familiar entrance. „Still as entertaining as always, I see," he continued. On his lips was a smile that was belied by the expression in his eyes. With a gesture of his hand he dismissed all but two of the guards and their commanding officer.

Dylan straightened up, standing as tall as he could, not willing to offer the other man the satisfaction of observing his concern. „Wouldn't want to risk my reputation," he grinned broadly.

Jonah Draeger contemplated him coldly. „Yes, we'll see about that," he quietly concluded. Then turning to the soldiers he added: „Seal the airlocks, take him to one of the storage decks and put him in chains, then prepare for lift-off."

„Hold it," a cold, clear voice suddenly interrupted. Casually approaching them from the cockpit, Beka sharply motioned the officer towards her. „I want him," her chin indicated Dylan, „with me in the cockpit."

„Too bad, Rebekkah. Unfortunately, my dear, I've seen the two of you together, and I didn't like the result. You already sided with him against me once. I won't let that happen again," Jonah objected.

The Nietzschean officer cast confused looks from one human to the other.

„I didn't side with him. You betrayed me, I took my chance with someone else," Beka told him bluntly. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. „No one takes advantage of my feelings, Jonah, and gets away with it."

„Is this a threat, Rebekkah?" He sounded quite amused. She merely shrugged her shoulders.

„Just a statement. Now: about Dylan..." she returned to her initial subject, „he stays with me."

"And why is that?"

„Because I don't want him on some deck alone with three Drago-Khatzovs," she answered coldly.

„Don't worry, Beka. I'll..." Dylan wanted to reassure her. He didn't get much further though, before the officer's fist buried itself in his stomach.

„You stay out of it, kludge," barked the officer.

„See?" Beka asked Jonah. "Point in case. It might trouble me." Her tone became even colder, her voice lowering to a whisper, as she got closer to both Draeger and Dylan, pointedly ignoring the three Nietzscheans. „You see, in fact it might even trouble me enough to make my hands wet while in slipstream. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

„Rebekkah, you really are in no position to threaten me. Do you really want me to believe that you'll risk your life," he hesitated a little, „... your life and his, just to prove a point?"

„Jonah," Beka laughed in a mildly amused manner, „I've risked his life and mine for much lesser causes more times already than you could ever dream of."

„With your survival instincts? Oh, I really doubt that." The Seefran sounded unconvinced.

„Don't!"

They looked each other unblinkingly in the eye all the while being silently watched by the soldiers and by Dylan, who was wondering what this was all about.

„Why are you doing this, Rebekkah? I mean, you trusted us..." Jonah scrutinized the guards and cocked his head towards them, „... trusted them with Rafe..."

„Rafe doesn't have Dylan's history with the Drago-Khatzov, with you, with..." her voice trailed off.

Draeger turned towards the captain of the _Andromeda_. „That's all?"

„And just what do you have in mind?" Dylan couldn't help taunting the man who stood right in front him.

Draeger backhanded Dylan across the mouth. The force of the blow was strong enough to whip Dylan's head to the side. The blow was so fast, that Dylan didn't start to feel the pain from his split lip until after Draeger had returned to staring at him impassively, as if nothing had happened.

„Oh, please, spare me!" Beka laughed mockingly stepping between the two of them. „Before you two decide to start wetting the bulkhead to mark your territory, may I remind you, Jonah, that he is still, if only just, my captain?"

„Just your captain, eh?" the Seefran asked unconvinced, his eyes not leaving Dylan's.

Slowly licking away the blood from the corner of his mouth, the High Guard captain shrugged mockingly.

„Pretences! She never calls me captain, and she never salutes me! Kissing, yes, that happens, but saluting – never!" Draeger struck him again, just as hard and fast as the first time, this time hitting the other side of his mouth.

„That's enough, both of you!" Beka shouted, as she stepped between them and extented her arms palms out against their chests in an attempt to separate the two men. The two combatants glared at each other, Dylan defiantly, if slightly distracted by the pain in his jaw, Draeger with a harsh, distant expression on his face that bode not well for Dylan.

„You, Über!" Beka turned back towards the officer, who scowled at the insult, but didn't react further, „take him to the cockpit. This matter is closed!" she insisted firmly. Then turning her back dismissively on her one time lover and his associates she strode towards the command center. The Nietzschean officer looked questioningly at Draeger who seemed to be still struggling to control his anger.

„Do as she says," he then confirmed. „I have some work to do in the crew's quarters. Have Ariobarzanes stay guard with them. I don't want them to talk to each other."

She didn't even wait for the soldier to arrive at the door after he tightly chained Dylan, who had both his hands and legs cuffed, to the rail, before she exploded.

„What has gotten into you? Do you want him to kill you?" Thanks to the subvocal communicators Harper had developed quite some time ago, talking to each other was not really a problem. At first Beka had resented to have one of the tiny devices implanted in her throat, but now she was rather happy that thanks to Harper's and Rommie's incessant badgering she had changed her mind.

„Just wanted to test him a little," Dylan answered, sounding a little sheepish.

„Test him? On what? Whether or not he's strong enough to break your nose? He is! Believe me, I would know..."

„I bet you would!"

„Dylan! What is the matter with you?"

„Nothing. Nothing at all. It's more like what's the matter with you?"

„What do you mean?"

„I mean, you disappear, we go nuts about it, look for you like madmen for more than a week, than find you and Rafe on Myrmidon. Rafe goes for help to the _Andromeda_, you don't want to leave because of him and the _Maru_, but then, after you find out that Rafe's safe, you still seem on rather good terms with the Drago-Khatzov. And Jonah Draeger, mind you!"

„I'm not ‚on good terms' with them. I just don't have a choice. They would have hurt Rafe, had I not played along. And now they'll threaten to hurt you. And I don't have a plan as to how to get us out of here and I bet you don't have one either...?" For a moment she threw him a glance, looking away from the control panels, where she was performing the last minute checks before their departure.

Dylan just shook his head.

„No, I didn't think so. Well, in that case I will have to play along some more," Beka sighed, returning to her task.

„And this ‚playing along' means what?"

„They want me to fly some... let's say peculiar slipstream routes."

„Where to? Ral Parthia?"

„You know?"

Dylan shrugged again, grimacing a little as his chains started clinking, attracting the guard's attention, then flinching slightly as his grimace again opened up the split on his lip.

„We found you because Rafe managed to get one of the Nietzscheans to sell some of your CDs together with maps showing slipstream routes to Ral Pathia."

„He sold my CDs?"

„Beka, please! Focus! Doyle bought them, they are safe with her. Beka? Ral Parthia?" he urged her again.

„Yes, right." She still was mad, he could see that by the way her lips where pressed together. „Not slipstream routes, route, just one. One jump, but it's a tough one..." She turned towards the _Maru_'s control panel and pressed a button of the com-link.

„Myrmidon planetary control, come in, please. This is the _Eureka Maru_, clearance for departure."

„_Eureka Maru_, this is Myrmidon. Permission for take-off granted."

„_Maru_, give me shipwide. Attention, all decks, this is Captain Valentine, we've been cleared for departure, prepare for launch."

With a quick surge of power from the _Maru_'s engines Beka guided the ship from the landing pad and through the planet's atmosphere as effortlessly and as gracefully as a falcon taking flight from the arm of a falconer. After all those years, Beka's excellence in handling spacecrafts still never failed to impress Dylan. He was a talented pilot himself and accustomed to seeing some of the best pilots of the three galaxies operating at the helm of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, yet he still marveled at the extent of Beka's flying skills. No matter what she was piloting, she always seemed to become one with her ship, merging with it in an almost organic manner. Extraordinary in every spacecraft, she was simply superb at the helm of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ and absolutely stunning when piloting the _Maru_. He waited in silence until they were clear from orbit.

„Impressive," he acknowledged. She threw him a cocky, if furtive grin.

„No matter how mad you are at me, I can always get you just by simply flying."

He couldn't suppress a grin.

„Don't let it get to your head. This slipstream route... does Rafe know about it?"

„I don't know. It's behind the Illion solar system, one slipstream portal , more like a wormhole actually, hidden behind the asteroid belt of Volturia in the Crimean system. It opens up and closes on a regular basis. But one can't really foresee it. You have to be there and just grab the chance."

„That's insane! The entire Crimean system is gravitationally unstable because of the Bendon Quasar in its vicinity."

„Hey, don't look at me. It was your precious Vedrans who took Ral Parthia off the slipstream map."

„_Andromeda_ would never make it... She is too big for this. If this is where we're heading..."

„They can't follow us, I know. However, there is a faint chance that we'll be heading back. I did the trip twice already. It's just... it is..."

„What?"

„Unpleasant. It's a 41-hour slipstream ride," she said, sounding almost pained.

Dylan stared at her in shock. „41-hour ride?"

She nodded imperceptibly.

„Forty-one hours? But... Beka, no one can stay in slipstream for so long without a break."

„I can."

From where he stood, he could see her profile, the clenched jaws, the tightly pressed lips. There was more to it, so much more that he was almost afraid to ask.

„How?" When she didn't answer he became more insistent. „Beka, tell me! How?"

„You already know the answer. There is only one way," she stated weakly, turning her head towards him so their eyes met. He sagged against the rail, when he saw the despair in her eyes.

„Flash?" She only nodded. „Why? Why did you agree?" She flinched at the tone of accusation in his voice, her eyes returning to the displays in front of her. Dylan closed his eyes in frustration. He hadn't meant it that way, it wasn't supposed to sound like an accusation, but judging by the look on her face she had taken it as such.

„I didn't ‚agree' to it. They made me. They injected me with nanobots carrying minuscule doses of flash. Just like adrenaline, they unload due to a reaction to stress during slipstream flights. Unlike adrenaline, it's not an instinctive impulse. You do it voluntarily, you can even decide on the amount. It's an experiment, actually. I refused, of course, when they first told me. But then we took the _Maru_ and headed for slipstream; it got really ugly. And I kicked into action. I think, I could have prevented it, but I didn't want to. We would have died there..." She spoke as if in pain, an undertone of shame and sorrow underlying her every word. He listened to her wide-eyed, his fists clenched together.

She continued speaking slowly as if to help him understand. „I did better on the way back, controlled it better, but I couldn't do it without," she continued slowly. „Later came withdrawal. It was quite awful, but actually easier than I remembered..."

Dylan couldn't see her face anymore. Beka had dropped her head, her chin resting on her chest, her long hair falling over her cheeks and hiding her face from him.

„Who..." His voice failed him. He started over, coughing. „Who did this to you? Jonah?"

She nodded miserably. He took a step towards her, but the chains prevented him from advancing further. The Nietzschean threw him a curious glance wondering, so Dylan backed off again, his hands going up in a gesture of surrender.

„Just what is it with this guy and chains?" he fumed.

His throat was tight with sorrow, so tight, in fact, it hurt. But under all his feelings of grief and sorrow and concern for Beka, he felt a rage building up in him like nothing he had ever felt before. Five years, five years of battling her need for flash, her cravings and never once giving in, five years of constant struggle, requiring discipline and strength that Dylan could only imagine. If anything had ever matched his awe at her piloting skills, it had been her endurance, her determination in her fight with the flash. And now it was all moot, because some son of a bitch had thought it a good idea to experiment on her. He never would have thought Jonah Draeger - or anybody else, for that matter - capable of such an abomination, nor had he seemed like the type of person interested in such experiments. An errant thought crossed his mind.

„This experiment..." he asked, „what is it about?"

„They're breeding a new race, Dylan, a new race of Nietzscheans – on Ral Pathia, of all places."

„Who is? I mean, Jonah is not..."

„Jonah, Dylan, is simply Jonah Draeger. Do you recall his company's name on Seefra?

„Drago Corp. Why? What does this have to do with all that? How did he end up here, anyway?" Dylan hadn't quite finished his sentence, when his eyes widened in understanding. Giving him a furtive glance, Beka noticed the horrified look on his face and nodded.

„Yeah, you've got it. Peter was really a busy boy on Seefra. I was the female Alpha, but he didn't restrict himself to his own DNA alone. The original prides like Kodiak, the Sabra and the Drago have all gotten special DNA in addition to Peter's own, in order to keep their gene pool large and sound enough. While Peter is the Alpha male of all Nietzscheans, Jonah is the – shall we say ‚secondary father' of the Dragans."

„Who would have thought that Drago Musseveni was..."

„But Peter isn't Drago!"

„He's not? How can that be? On Seefra, when I checked Tyr's ‚sacred bones' they were simply gone..."

„Of course, they are the bones of Drago Musseveni, whom Paul Musseveni hadn't sired yet."

„So Peter..."

„Peter is Paul, yes."

„He... **is**?" Dylan asked dumbfounded.

„Oh yes, the other guy..." Beka answered bitterly.

Dylan let out a soft sigh. „Oh, this is just perfect!" he whispered. Turning his head slightly away from Beka, as if wanting to escape from the magnitude of what she had just told him, he continued his muttering. „First Rafe, then Jonah, and now even Peter... This is just frikking great! The proud selection of Miss Valentine's finest!" From the corner of his eye he saw Beka flinching. _No_, he wanted to scream, _I didn't say this loud, or did I_? But it was too late. She had heard him.

„Beka..." She didn't answer. „Beka," he tried anew. „I didn't mean it that way."

„Oh yes, you did," Beka replied toneless. „Don't worry about it. You're right, you know!"


	15. Chapter 14

Everyone thanks a lot for the reviews. I do appreciate.

Chapter 14

Dylan still had more questions but at the moment he was too upset with himself to ask any of them. The three of them simply remained in silence, the Nietzschean guard unmoving at the entrance to the cockpit, Beka concentrating on flying the _Maru_, and Dylan contemplating her rigid neck and profile.

_You, Dylan Hunt, just blew it, again,_ he thought bitterly. He had gone about the whole business all wrong . Losing precious time before starting to look for Beka, keeping Harper in the dark, misjudging... well, practically everybody, Rommie, Rhade, even Doyle, losing more time on Myrmidon and now accusing Beka of... of what, actually?

_How could you say those things to her,_ he admonished himself. _And, more importantly, why? It's not like it's her fault she is her brother's sister. And Jonah... When she met him, she was quite free to do exactly as she pleased: there was no Commonwealth, no functioning _Andromeda_, no crew, not even friends... And Peter... and the Nietzscheans..._ He involuntarily shut his eyes. _Don't go there, Dylan, just don't go there!_

Thinking about Peter and his ‚experiments' did nothing to improve his mood. Beka and flash and slipstream. _How sick is that?_ he thought, _especially from a guy who claims to admire her_. Dylan knew that it was imperative to find out exactly what this was all about but after all the things Beka just told him, his mind shrank away from exploring the subject. To every member of the _Andromeda_'s senior crew, Beka and flash was a more than painful subject.

Strangely enough, it was Beka who seemed to handle her addiction best. She soldiered on with a strength, dignity and straightforwardness the others lacked: Doyle, who had learned of Beka's addiction from the, couldn't reconcile the Beka she knew with her impressions of the addicts she had seen on Seefra, her only experience with the issue. Rhade who'd had his own struggles with addiction, simply refused to think about it, the idea didn't sit well with the concept of Beka being the Matriarch of all Nietzscheans. Rommie was concerned, permanently monitoring Beka's physiology, but not willing to go any further. Harper was just scared, constantly fearing that something or someone would come across and plunge Beka into yet another flash trip, afraid what she might do then, kick his ass, overdose, whatever. And Trance, she seemed, well... guilty of exactly what and why Dylan couldn't tell. At least, he hadn't until recently.

_The invitation to Transgalactica's 5-year anniversary, only a few months after their victory over the Abyss, had come as a surprise, as had Beka's acceptance. But once she had accepted, the rest of the crew insisted on coming with her. In spite of the infamous Sid Barrett's amazing, and constantly improving, transformation into successful, distinguished, business-like Sam Profit, who simply liked to nurture some of his old 'Uncle Sid' weak spots, no one aboard the_ Andromeda Ascendant _was willing to trust him any further than they could throw him, especially not with Beka, and so they all went._

_It was a grand affair, more of an event than a party, held in one of Seraglio's most luxurious resorts. Thousands of guests populated the banquet halls, the gardens, the bars and dining rooms._

_As soon as they arrived Beka was informed that she was the guest of honour. She and her companions were all invited to sit at Barrett's table, where their host openly demonstrated not only his affection for Beka Valentine but, to use in Dylan's words, also his intimacy with the Restored Systems Commonwealth's most respected assets. Somewhat surprisingly they had fun, greatly enjoying the beautiful surroundings, the excellent food, exquisite drinks, good music and Sid's dry, humorous comments on the other guests. As the evening grew into the night, even Rhade's glacially beautiful wife warmed up. Harper hit on every pretty girl within 200 meters while Trance indulged in one sweet tropical cocktail after another and as a result ended up laughing herself silly at every one of Sid's jokes. Rommie and Doyle gossiped with each other whenever the crowd of male admirers they attracted allowed them to do so. Beka quietly enjoyed the attention Harper, Rhade and Dylan, along with several other men, payed her, each vying for his opportunity to be serving her, walking, chatting or dancing with her, but pointedly never leaving her alone with her uncle. The party seemed a roaring success, until one of the guests walking by their table stumbled, falling down next to Beka's feet._

_She helped him up, and their eyes met - his a white-ish mess reminding of freshly opened oysters, not quite dead yet, but no longer alive either, hers widening in pity and distaste and sorrow. The flash-fried fellow left them immediately, without even nodding as a thank-you towards Beka, taking their pleasant mood along with him. Seconds afterwards Rhade took his  
wife to the dance floor, fleeing the awkward silence._

_Beka stood up from the table._

_"I'm going for some fresh air," she informed them quietly. Dylan attempted to get up and follow her but as he started to rise he was stopped by her hand pressing down on his shoulder._

_"Stay and stop watching me like a hawk. You do this whenever something like this happens," she told him coldly_.

_"I'm not..." he wanted to protest, but she interrupted."You are; and I'm sick of it!" _

_"Beka..." Sid fell in, also attempting to rise. "Beka, I am sorry..." _

_Surprised, the High Guard looked from his host to his XO and back again. Sid sounded quite honestly distraught about the scene he witnessed, almost crushed, in fact._

_"It's not your fault. Parties like this attract all sorts of people," Dylan politely told him._

_"No, no that... The flash... I am so very sorry!"_

_"That's hardly your fault either," the Vedran tried consoling his obviously troubled host, all the while secretly peering at his first officer, who stood frozen in place, head bowed, her hands deeply buried in the pockets of her pants. But then she looked at Sid, threw him an icy glance, the features of her face hardening as she stared at him._

_"It is a little late now." Beka's voice matched the chilling expression in her eyes. "You should have been sorry when you tied me down and forced the flash into my eyes for the first time." _

"_Beka..." her uncle helplessly began anew, but then dropped his head as he met her stern glare.  
_  
_"I know, Sid," Beka answered. "I know, and there was a time when I hated you for what you did to me, but it's alright now, I've come to terms with it. Otherwise we... __**I**__ wouldn't have come tonight. But right now, I need to get away from this place... and you." And with that she walked away from the table striding in the direction of the gardens.  
_  
_The rest of the group had sat in stunned silence for a moment. Finally Dylan cleared his voice: _

"_Tied her down, Mr Profit? Would you like to elaborate?" he asked. His voice was mild, the look in his eyes was anything but.  
_  
_Startled, Sid lifted his head and watched him curiously. _

"_You mean, you don't know?" he blurted out.  
_  
_"Don't know what?" the _Andromeda_'s captain inquired, by now more than just intrigued about what Sid was talking about. "Trance...?"_ _He turned towards her, as he saw Beka's uncle furtively throwing her an inquisitive glance. "Trance!" Dylan 's voice changed from questioning to demanding, his eyes darkening and narrowing, as he saw the young woman seem to shrink under his gaze, her shoulders sagging and her eyes downcast as if she was too afraid or too ashamed to look him in the face.  
Dylan turned his attention to Sid again: "Never got the news? Gee, I thought that it was common knowledge by now that on personal matters the senior crew of the_ Andromeda Ascendant _likes to keep their captain informed on a strictly need-to-know basis. And while the definition of need-to-know is rather narrow, the one of personal matters is positively vast and growing." His voice sounded both razor sharp and bitter at once. "Mr. Harper, do __**you**__ have something you'd want to share with me?"  
_  
_The engineer had watched the unfolding scene in silence, his eyes shifting from one person to another. Noticing the resemblance between his captain and a thunderstorm cloud threatening to break loose (no small feat for someone dressed in a startling white shirt), Harper merely shook his head.  
"I don't know nothing, boss, honestly," he quietly assured his commanding officer, looking into Dylan's eyes for a few seconds to reinforce his words. _

_Dylan finally nodded and turned to Sid once more._

"_Mr Profit? Today, please?"  
_  
_Showing a sense of tactics that Rhade would have approved of Harper and Trance took advantage of Dylan's shift in attention, to hastily excuse themselves, using his distraction to get lost in the crowd; the engineer was clearly upset and concerned for Beka, the golden alien now instantaneously sobered up, yet again looking guilty. Rommie and Doyle stood up and walked towards the gardens, correctly interpreting their captain's expression as an order to go look after Beka and leave him and Sid alone at the table.  
_  
_"I'm not going to leave until you tell me exactly what Beka meant," Dylan told the elder man, his jaw sat square with determination.  
_  
_"Promises, promises..." his host replied with a humorless smile, but then sighed in resignation upon meeting the officer's impatient, slightly menacing expression. _What's he gonna do, kill me?_ Sid thought. _With all the guards around the boy wouldn't stand a chance, and he damn' well knows it. _His confidence was shattered when a another thought surfaced. _This is the guy who went toe to toe with the Spirit of the Abyss and won. Maybe he thinks he can get away with it. Very well, since he's going to find out sooner or later know, it might just as well be me telling him, at least I can control what he hears.

_Sid started to explain how he had addicted Beka to flash. Dylan had known that Sid had given Beka flash, but somehow he had missed that it was Sid  
who had introduced her to the drug in the first place and had done so by force. As the tale continued, Dylan nearly began to shake with suppressed anger, he sat there in a stony silence, his hand closing ever more tightly around his glass until it shattered and blood began to seep through his clinched fist. _

"_Oh dear, you've cut your hand. Here, let me help you," Sid exclaimed, his voice oozing insincerity. As he leaned forward attempting to place his napkin on the injuries, Dylan jerked his hand away from his host._

"_Look, I know what you're thinking..." Barrett said trying to appease Andromeda's captain, but his endeavors were cut short by Dylan's harsh laughter._

_'I seriously doubt that, Mr Profit," Dylan's voice was little more than a low growl, each word sounding as if it was bitten off. "Because you see, at the moment all I am thinking of is why I shouldn't tear you apart this very minute, limb by miserable limb."_

"_Now, now, Captain... That's a little extreme, don't you think? Even Rocket forgave  
me..." Sid laughed in a nervous tone._

_Dylan sprang to his feet, his chair falling to the side. Several of the security guards started to advance towards the table but stopped when Sid shook his head 'no'. Towering over Beka's uncle, he bent down, placing his hand on the juncture between shoulder and neck, dangerously close to the carotid artery._

"_Don't ever call her that again, when I'm around to hear it," he said through clenched teeth, tightening his grip on Sid's neck until the other man's face paled in pain. "Beka might have forgiven you; but then she is a better person than the both of us."_

"_Is she now? Captain Hunt, as pleased as I am to see someone of your..." Sid Barrett hesitated slightly, his eyes looking Dylan over from head to feet and back again, "impressive standards so taken with my niece, I don't think that you really can grasp every little nuance of the Valentine-character."_

"_Mr Profit," the younger man replied, stressing every word, "I might not have known Beka for so long as you have, but I believe to know her better than I ever have known anyone in my entire life. Too well in fact to discuss her with someone who treated her the way you have."_

"_The last time we met, you didn't seem to mind."_

_Dylan's face reddened with anger. "The last time we met, I didn't have all the information. The last time we met you were already half dead. The last time we met," he almost breathlessly concluded, "I was under orders."_

„_Oh yes, of course, the orders!" In spite of the pain from Dylan's grip, Sid seemed to relax as if he felt he had regained control of the situation and a small sardonic smile blossomed on his lips. "And you are known as one to follow orders to the letter, I believe, dear Captain?"_

_His eyes narrowing, his mouth twisted in disgust, Dylan suddenly released his grip on Beka's uncle.  
"Mostly, I'm known as someone who keeps his promises, Mr. Profit." His voice was quietly conversational as if he was talking about the weather. "And I promise you that if you ever only so much as think about harming Beka in any way again, I won't leave enough of you to be sufficient for a DNA identification-test. Do you believe that?"_

_The utter calmness of Dylan's voice frightened Sid more than rage would have as he finally came to understand just how deadly Dylan could be._

"_I do," he nodded quietly, finally submissive. _

"_Good," Dylan hissed in an icy tone. He then turned his back dismissively on the tycoon and went off in search of Beka._

In the aftermath, the captain often wondered if and to which extent his newly gained knowledge helped.


	16. Chapter 15

Originally this and the previous chapter were meant to come as one, but it just got too long. I'm not entirely happy with them both, but I need to get this story going again, so I won't waste more time on this part. I do hope you enjoy nonetheless. (I can promise that right after this the action starts again.)

Again, thank you all for the inspiring reviews.

**Chapter 15**

Sid's admission completed the puzzle. In all the years since his first confrontation with Beka's flash addiction, Dylan had always felt that there was some piece missing. He knew of Beka's father, of her fear of some inherited penchant for drugs, he understood, why she had returned to it on their ill-fated attempt to reach Tarn Vedra, but she never seemed to him like someone to succumb to her insecurities and weaknesses and fears. How she had become addicted to flash, her all-time _bête noire_, in the first place, had always remained a mystery to him, until now. While he felt relieved to find out that she had never initially sought out the drug, it infuriated him him almost to the limits of his self control to learn what had been done to her, right under his nose, without him ever suspecting a thing. In the months following his realization of how her addiction had started, he had tried talking to Beka, but she had refused to discuss it with him, telling him that she had dealt with it, with Sid, and had no urge to go over it yet again with him. That she saw no need to blame her addiction on Sid: he had not been around when she resumed taking the drug, that she had had other reasons then and dignity compelled her to stand by her own choices.

Talking to Trance hadn't proved any more fruitful. Like him, Trance felt guilty for letting all this happen: she had been the one away with Beka, had promised to take care of her... and she had failed miserably. After a while, he decided to drop the matter, convinced that it would not be fair to anyone to press it any further, as he seemed to be the only one, who couldn't let it go.

It had seemed to be the right decision at the time. If anything, it had made Beka even stronger to know that now not only Trance but all the others knew the  
origins of her addiction. It had reassured Rommie, appeased Rhade and made Harper less afraid; even if it did nothing to diminish Dylan's outrage nor Trance's feelings of guilt. In the time before Trance's departure things had at last been better; aboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_ their world was in order. Finally.

And now they were here. Dylan ground his teeth. He was stuck, and he knew it. He was a prisoner, they were heading for a highly unstable solar system, and from there were going to enter an even more dangerous slipstream route leading to a place that had been cut from the rest of the universe for years, where a lunatic with plans of almightiness was awaiting them; and in order to bring them through, Beka had to go back on flash. The odds of the _Andromeda_ finding and helping them, even if Rafe made it to her in time were infinitesimal. And he had put Beka off, big time, with his stupid remarks.

"Beka..." he began awkwardly.

"Not now, Dylan. Were exiting Illion. I have to plot a course for the Crimean System."

He took the hint and shut up.

Beka was thankful for the respite. She knew what she told him had shaken him badly. Although she was wrong in suspecting him to be most appalled about  
the fact that Peter had reappeared, she knew him well enough to realize that the way she had been treated affected him deeply. _If only..._ she thought saddened.  
If only he had listened, if only he had left, if only he had told her sooner that Rafe **was** safely gone... She knew she would have made it out of Illion, she would have thought of something once aboard the _Maru_. She was shrewd and cunning, and Peter was quite right: she was a survivor, and left to her own devices she seldom lost a fight. The Nietzscheans had had Rafe to force her hand, to keep her down, and now... now they had Dylan. She shook her head in anger and turned her eyes to the Maru's instrument displays.

_The story of my life_, she thought ironically. Whenever there was some chance to finally make a big score, there was some guy or other to trip her up.

She longingly thought back of the ‚good old times', when she was comfortably settled onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, alternately bathing in either Harper's relentless admiration, Tyr's intrigued interest and Dylan's warm respect. She had played them well, not cruelly, but still thoroughly enjoying the opportunities of the situation.

And then along came Bobby, popping out of her past like some ugly, hideous Jack in the box, destroying the precarious equilibrium she had created for herself. In the end in order to save Dylan she had been forced to kill Bobby. It was this act of commitment that destroyed the fragile balance between them. She had pulled the High Guard captain out of the singularity, brought the Perseids into his Commonwealth, prevented him from becoming Magog food, delivered to him the Hegemon's Heart and with it the Than-Thre-Kull. He was indebted to her more than he would have cared to admit, but she knew he didn't really mind; yet when she killed her former boy friend, the one he knew she still loved somehow... His behavior towards her changed, it was if in some way he was afraid of her from then on.

He had reassured her that his belief in her was stronger than it had ever been in anyone else he had even known; that he trusted her completely, but as time passed she came to realize that a part of their relationship had died. She had tried to revive it, but it had been futile. She was the still his second-in-command, reliable, competent, trustworthy, the dashing, stunning pilot, the fierce amazone warrior able to overcome all odds, but their comradeship, their friendship was gone. The others, they had noticed, but none had understood. She was still Harpers buddy, and she and Tyr still danced their complicated waltz of pheromones and distrust. Trance despite her physical transformation still remained her friend and even Rommie continued to accept her not only as a crew member, but as family as well.

Dylan withdrew, however; he had watched her sacrifice more to him, to his cause than he would have thought possible. She had stood by him beyond the call of duty. He appeared to be grateful - and yet he also made her feel left out, pushed aside... as Beka. It was as if he thought that, would he let this go on the way it had developed, he would have found it impossible to trust himself to still be able to be her captain . Already it seemed harder for him to put her in the line of fire, to not constantly keep her closely by his side or at least safely away from all that might have been out to get her. It might have been concern but to Beka it felt more like a rejection. In time she convinced herself that - even as his first officer - had there been another to take her place... But there was none. And the Worldship was coming. From one day to another the captain had made up his mind and severed the ties that bound Dylan to Beka. It left all of them puzzled.

Strangely enough, it was Rommie who finally understood. Rommie, who had noticed Beka's terror when she had thought Dylan killed during their fight with the Cetus, Rommie, who had recorded Beka's conversation with Charlemagne Bolivar, when she had warned the leader of the Sabra-Jaguar not to double-cross Dylan, who had seen her first officer push all of them beyond limits, who had seen her risking Tyr, who was a cherished friend, and even the _Maru_, her shelter and her home, in order to once more save Dylan from a black hole. She understood because she had once been in the spot occupied now by Beka. Yet when the two of them had been on the Worldship, when she had tried to do her duty, to advise him, when they couldn't find Harper, Tyr and Rev and were, assaulted by Magog, mere minutes away from dying in a nova bomb-explosion, when she had tried to really talk to Dylan, he had pushed her back. And when she had insisted, he had made it final. _Captain's orders, Rommie!_ Rommie was a warship. And she had complied.

Back on the _Andromeda_ they had begun to change. All of them had, but Dylan had started to change most. Still pursuing his dream of a restored Commonwealth and now driven from behind by the Worldship's threat, the confident, idealistic, relaxed Dylan Hunt slowly gave way to a rigid, strict, obsessively focused captain, who soldiered on and on, more of a military officer than Rommie could recall from even before the Fall. It went against his instincts. It went against his nature. And in the consequence it made him harsh and bitter and uncommonly aloof. It wasn't much, but somehow it was just enough. In another man, born and raised in those times, it might not even have mattered. In him it was nearly devastating. But he did hold on to some fragments of hope, some splinters of ideals. Using hierarchy and military discipline, that he had neglected for so long since the Fall, he almost by reflex built up a whole system of rules and schemes and fences to help himself along.

Rommie understood. Rommie, who knew that Dylan looked at his ship as an extension, a completion of his own self. As he did now with Beka. The only problem was: Beka was not a warship. And she was not one to be commanded. She never called him captain, she never did salute him, she did what he told her when - and only when - she thought that he was right. But if they disagreed she stubbornly clung on to her views and simply relied on her best friend - Dylan. And for more than one year he put up with it.

And then along came Profit. Rommie knew he was trouble right from the very start. Though, what she had not expected was the trouble to occur between her two commanding officers. One more time Captain Valentine strongly disagreed with Captain Hunt - and their orders from Commonwealth High Command. The first officer argued with her captain, and when he didn't agree, Beka simply went along with what she thought best, expecting Dylan to just follow her lead. After all, he had promised her to stand by her always, every step of the way... This time it didn't happen. Captain Hunt insisted that she did as told.

_Don't understand. Just fix it. Captain's orders, Beka! _

_She fixed it. But from that day on she had the feeling that she had begun to lose Dylan. He could have related to that. He had all along felt that he was losing Dylan; but he thought it necessary to preserve the captain. It didn't quite work out._

As time went by Beka began to command the _Andromeda_ even more than Dylan, who in turn became restless, reckless. He seemed to lose his focus the more the Commonwealth became more of a reality and less of an ideal. Her reliability and competence was enough to balance out his carelessness, but Beka knew deep down that one day it would not be enough, and they all would pay the price. When Tyr left, it hurt but didn't surprise her, not as it surprised Dylan. And it did not shatter her. It did shatter their captain though. Her heart, all their hearts went out to him, but he didn't notice. From then on it went downhill; hurt by Tyr's withdrawal (they all called it 'betrayal', but Beka had her doubts), he didn't try to reach out to the ones who had stood by him; instead he started to lose his trust in Beka and in the end he lost his trust in everybody, especially himself.

Rommie watched in silence as her captain slowly took over the man. Although in some ways she regretted it and had some doubts about it, in other ways she approved. It worked with her, their new crew, Rhade, even with Harper. It even worked with Trance, who had mutated from their purple bubble of happiness and enchantment to some frightfully strong golden warrior goddess of unknown origins, powers and foresight. In fact, the new Trance actively encouraged the captain to dominate the man.

Although she was no more human than Trance, Rommie - in spite of her warship nature - was not so sure about Dylan's transformation. Nor did she believe that he would succeed fully. He didn't. Not with Beka. When it came to Beka, whenever she was in danger, Dylan resurfaced. In full force, violently, with might and determination. The captain tried to fight it. He fought and fought - and lost. Time and again he lost. But once the moments passed, Captain Hunt took over, not trusting anybody any more than before.

For all it's worth, Beka knew that he had tried to fight this, too. She never would forget his eyes when she had left him to set out their trap for Tyr. He seemed so lost and so completely lonely, clearly panicking at the thought that she might change her mind and decide to stay with the Nietzschean. She understood - somehow, yet it did hurt her deeply that he didn't trust her enough to just not be afraid.

His relief upon her return had been enormous, almost palpable, his trust anew complete; unfortunately enough, by then she was past caring. The Abyss had taken up residence in her mind, gaining more and more control over her actions. And she had lost Tyr, for whom she had cared deeply. If not enough to choose him over Dylan Hunt, deeply enough to mourn what might have been and was not.  
The irony was not lost to her that Dylan trusted her anew when she was no longer to be trusted. By the time he noticed, it had been almost too late. But then he fought for her, fought the Abyss in her - and won, eventually. Sadly enough, the time was up to find a way to each other's friendship again, the Worldship close and the Apocalypse, well, at least their apocalypse imminent.

With the sole exception of Trance, Beka was probably the only one of them to fully grasp the meaning of the Abyss' nature. Being called to stand up against it while defending at the same time three million sentient beings tied to an immobile rock in space, who didn't want defending, sounded to Beka like lunacy. It did to all of them. But Rhade was in love, Harper in denial, Trance her usual cryptic messenger of doom. And Rommie, once again the only one to understand Beka, was a warship. When her captain told her to hold the line and fight, she held the line and fought, no matter what the outcome.

Beka was not a warship. And she knew the Abyss. She didn't mind dying, although she preferred to live. But to die stupidly serving a cause long lost, deliberately leading out of sheer stubbornness the ones she loved, who trusted and believed in her into the darkness was so not Valentine.

And so she ran, and he just let her. One more time the Captain made room for Dylan Hunt. He tried, though, one more time as well, to persuade her not to walk out on him, but she couldn't pay attention. She looked at him, no longer seeing him, but a talking, breathing, walking, somehow still living corpse. However, once in slipstream the memories came to hunt her, memories of something she had ignored as it happened. She suddenly could feel his trembling lips on her hand, could hear his voice breaking, as he was promising her that they will meet again, could see his wet eyes pleading with her to understand him. She turned back on the spot. He had lost his battle, was in a slipfighter running, and so she cleared his path into the Route of Ages. Then she went for Harper. But it was just too late.

And then there was just Seefra, and along came Jonah. And Beka was quite ready to try and settle down. It was not meant to be.

Just like it had been with Bobby, her past caught up with her. Only now it was Dylan playing Jack in the box. Dylan, who unlike Bobby and in spite of all that had happened, somehow was still... Dylan. And no longer a captain of anything at all. While Jonah, his vows, proposals and compliments notwithstanding, somehow was just not Dylan. Not Dylan at all. So she had chosen Dylan.

The way back to themselves from what Seefra had turned them into had been long and harsh. But they had made it. Just. And then they fought some more. And won, one last time.

And now Jonah was back. Bringing Peter along with him. And she was getting tired of the Jack in the box-routine. Had it not been for Dylan, she would have thought of something. But Dylan hadn't listened.

_The story of my life._


	17. Chapter 16

**Squid109, thank your help with this! I really couldn't do without you.**

**Everybody else: thanks for the reviews. It's what keeps the story going and I very much appreciate the feedback (and try to take it into account).**

**Gambit**

**Chapter 16**

"Incoming message, Captain," the _Andromeda Ascendant_'s holographic image appeared next to a control console in the slipstream generator room. There were a pair of legs in baggy trousers and Commonwealth High Guard uniform boots sticking out from under the console. Its... **her** voice sounded as composed as ever, but to someone used to the sentient ship's vocal inflections there was a hint of irritation to be traced in it. "Captain," she urged a little more insistently looking down at the boots, "there is an incoming message for you!" There still was no response. In what could only be described as a snit of anger the image kicked one of the boots. Naturally enough there was no reaction and with a grimace of annoyance the holographic image vanished.

Seconds later the doors whooshed open and Rommie strode into the room a look of determination on her face. Without so much as a look around she headed directly towards the console from which the legs were still projecting and without further notice the avatar of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ simply bent down and grabbed the feet, unceremoniously pulling the man belonging to them out from under the console. Sparks flew as he let one of the conduits he was holding drop.

"What the...? Rommie, what are you doing?"

With a meaningful look around the machine shop, that was populated by four engineers who were suddenly very busy at other panels and consoles, Rommie focused again on Harper, who seemed puzzled and rather annoyed with the rude interruption.

"There is an incoming message for you, **Captain**," she then said once more, this time noticeably stressing his title. His blue eyes widened, as he realized that – once again – he hadn't heard her simply because he still hadn't got used to being referred to as ‚Captain'. It had become an all to common occurrence during the past two days since Dylan had left him in command. Harper had no trouble fulfilling his new duties in addition to his old ones. With the new crew on board, the stress of maintaining the Andromeda in tip-top shape had  
seriously diminished, even if most of them were inexperienced and in need of guiding. And with Dylan being so distracted during the past week, Harper had grown accustomed to performing more than one task at once. Being the highest ranking officer left aboard after Dylan's departure meant that he was the acting captain. Still having _Andromeda_, her hologram, and Rommie calling him ‚Captain' was a different matter altogether. It had an almost indecently final sound to it, that did not bode well in his ears. Born and raised on Earth, Seamus Harper was subject to all sorts of superstitions, and hearing himself being addressed to in such a manner made him feel that way even more: as if Dylan and Beka were gone for good, as if nothing will ever be the same anymore. He shook his head, chasing away the gloomy thoughts.

"Rhade?" he then asked sharply.

Rommie shook her head.

"No, it's not the governor. If I may suggest: it could be better to take this one in your office."

Harper swallowed visibly. **His** office, the captain's office... He nodded in agreement and turned towards one of the engineers, a young Perseid who seemed absorbed in his task at one of the rear panels:

"Mr. Othol, have one of the ensigns take your place and take over for me with the calibration of the cylinders. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

With that Harper left for the captain's office, without even a further glance back to reassure himself that his orders were obeyed. If the eager promptness with which they were carried out still surprised him, he didn't let it show.

-

The _Andromeda_'s acting captain sprinted down the corridors towards Dylan's office, as he stubbornly persisted in calling it.

"Spit it out, Rommie," he ordered the avatar accompanying him.

"It's our slipfighter, Harper." The slight rush of hope Harper felt when hearing those words died almost on the spot as he noticed that Rommie was clearly lacking the enthusiasm required by such an announcement. He didn't miss the undertone.

"Life signs?"

"Two, actually. Male and female. But they don't match Dylan and Beka."

Harper nodded absentmindedly. He sped up his pace even more, reaching his destination in record time. The room looked completely unused. During the past 48 hours since he had been put in charge, Harper had spent not more than 15 minutes in it. He almost dreaded the place, like it was some taboo-spot, haunted by ghosts or something. He felt that, if he did begin to use it properly, Dylan's and Beka's absence would become a permanent fact, something like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Damn'!" he whispered angrily. Then, more loudly: "Damn'! Damn'! DAMN'!"

The hologram of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ popped up in front of him, a slightly inquisitive look on her face.

"Quite!" she stated dryly. Sympathetically, Rommie stepped closer to him and gently laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Harper, why don't you just take the message?" The young man searched her eyes, somewhat comforted by the gentleness he saw there. They shared a brief look of mutual compassion, silently acknowledging their worries. Clearing his throat and redressing himself to full height (well, **his** full height, anyway), Harper nodded with sudden determination.

Without bothering to sit down, he issued his order:

"_Andromeda_, show me!"

"Aye, Captain!"

The monitor flickered and Raphael Valentine's face came into being, smiling broadly at them.

"_Andromeda Ascendant_, this is Raphael Valentine, requesting permission to dock."

"Rafe?" Harper asked incredulously, sounding taken aback by the sight in front of him. The view screen revealed Beka's brother and the most gorgeous red haired woman the engineer had ever seen, crammed together in the cramped cockpit of the slipfighter.

"Harper! Man, am I glad to see you guys! Are you in charge of this beauty now?"

"Rafe, where are Beka and Dylan? How did you get the slipfighter? And who is that babe with you?" the Terran asked in an impatient, annoyed voice.

"Well, hello to you, too! All in due time, Harper, all in due time. The explanations will take some time, so I suggest landing first..."

"Permission to land..." Harper stopped. His hand slicing slightly above his throat, he indicated to Rommie that he wanted communications cut off. The ship  
complied immediately. "Rommie, what hangar decks are empty?"

"12b, 23, 24d and 27," _Andromeda_ responded.

"12b it is then. Reopen communications! Rafe," Harper informed him, "permission to land granted. Hangar deck 12b. _Andromeda_, lead them in."

"Thank you, Captain Harper..." Rafe replied a little too fast and too smoothly. There was no ironic stressing in the way he had addressed the Earther, yet  
Harper couldn't help noticing the awkwardness of the answer. As did Rommie for that matter, who frowned as Raphael disappeared from the screen.

"Come on, Romdoll, let's go meet Mr. 'Brother of the Year'!" Harper said, already leaving in a hurry. "_Andromeda_, clear hangar deck 12b of all personnel, seal it as soon as our guests have landed and call two lancers, no - make that four, to guard it. No one's to get in or out before I reach it. And have a security team posted at each end of the corridor, as well."

"Harper! Do you really think that's necessary?" Rommie asked him doubtfully. The man threw her a glance, while checking his gauss gun and adjusting its fit in its holster.

"I mean, it's only the two of them and..."

The doors opened and they left the captain's office behind them jogging through the scarcely populated corridors. "I don't know, Rommie," he argued, while slipping a forcelance through his belt behind his back. "There's Dylan's slipfighter coming back from the Dragan homeworld, without Dylan, without Beka, bringing Beka's rogue brother along with some chick instead. You tell me." He sighed heavily upon noticing her pensive look, then continued:

"They show no sign of having been into any kind of trouble with Myrmidon's planetary defense systems. There's this chick I never met, and Rafe who, nice as he may seem, somehow seems to have involved Beka in God knows what, and we are within three light minutes range of Illion... I don't know if it's 'necessary', but I'd rather not take any chances!"

"I'm sorry, Captain, I didn't mean to question your decisions," Rommie replied contritely.

"None taken," Harper told her, flashing her a brief smile.

They reached their destination and he was pleased to note that the guards he had requested were already at their posts.

"Captain on deck!" one of them called out, as the others seemed to stand to attention even more rigidly than before.

"Yeah, whatever!" Harper said. "At ease... I mean: as you where... that is... Oh, never mind!" he sounded exasperated, as he seemed to lose his way through  
the High Guard commands required by the situation. "Just make sure no one gets in or out of here unless I say so," he ordered the lancers who appeared unfazed  
by their acting captain's linguistic troubles. _Either their training is really, really good or the crew is starting to get used to the usual manners aboard the_ Andromeda Ascendant, Harper thought admiringly. _Either way, it's cool._

-

His feet hadn't quite hit the deck when Raphael Valentine found himself thrown down on his back, with Rommie kneeling next to him, her hand pressing heavily against his chest and stopping short – very short – of crushing his ribs. In the meantime, Harper had his forcelance against the womans head. The girl froze up on the spot, hardly breathing at all.

"What the hell..." Rafe croaked with difficulty, trying to turn his head towards the _Andromeda_'s engineer.

"Talk, Rafe, and talk fast!" Harper ordered him coldly.

"How?" the tall man gasped, laboring to breathe from the pressure on his ribcage, pressure that seemed to be intensifying.

"Rommdoll, let him up, but keep a tight grip on him," Harper nodded towards the avatar.

She smoothly rose to her feet, taking Beka's brother along with her, one of her hands under his armpit, while the other was firmly clamped around his neck.

"Now," Harper began anew, "where are Beka and Dylan? How did you get the slipfighter? What were you doing on Myrmidon and how did you get clear of Illion without a single scratch?"

"Let's see," Rafe answered promptly, a small attempt to smile showing on his lips, "starting with the last one: I managed to sneak out. They took us to Myrmidon by force. Dylan told me to take the fighter. And, most importantly: for all I know, they are still on Myrmidon. Dylan is trying to get Beka, they are supposed to find their way to the Maru and get off asap; and they're requesting assistance."

His eyes met Harper's, who was watching him intensely. With some relief he felt the pressure on his neck loosen up a bit. Harper thoughtfully looked from Rafe to the red-haired woman and back to Rafe again, the forcelance still pressed to the young woman's temple.

"Who is she?"

"Tabea. She is... she was a slave to the Drago-Katzov. I figured it might be best to take her with me, since she alerted them when I tried to reach the slipfighter the first time around."

Harper's head snapped back to Tabea, his eyes cold and distant. The girl seemed to shrink under his scrutiny.

"Why did you do that?"

"I... I was... afraid... They would have killed me... I mean... They would have..."

"Fair enough. I know what you mean," He lowered the forcelance, but kept it in his hand.

"Okay, Rafe, here's the deal: we get back within realtime communication range with Terrazed, call Rhade, have a meeting, you tell us whatever you know..."

"Of course I'll tell you," Raphael interrupted.

"You don't get it. You're going to tell us everything, not just what you deem fit," the Andromeda's acting captain replied.

"Harper!" Rafe gasped as if shocked. "You wound me! As if I ever..."

His protestations were interrupted by an outraged Rommie, who slammed him against the slipfighter's hull at light speed, pinning him there with a forearm thrown  
across his throat.

"Do you think this is funny?" she hissed through clenched teeth. Her face inches from his own, her eyes boring into his, she looked the very image of an ancient fury goddess. "My XO's been missing for almost two weeks, my captain is now gone, as well! Something's going on with the Dragans, and we presume you to have something to do with it."

"I know, Andromeda, I know," Raphael hurriedly presented his excuses, "it's just that Harper..."

"Harper is my acting captain. You'll do exactly what he tells you, when he tells you..."

"It's all right, Rommdoll," Harper cut in, an amused expression on his face as he watched Rafe struggle against the avatar's imprisoning arm. She looked over to  
him, nodded and stepped back.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I think he has the picture now." He reached for Tabea's arm, gently pushing her over to Beka's brother, who took a deep  
breath and started massaging his throat as soon as Rommie released him.

"Let's get going."

They stepped out of the hangar deck. As the doors closed behind them, all four lancers stood to attention.

"Rommie," Harper stated, "take Mr... Burton and Ms Nantchev," a furtive glance at the guards' name-tags provided him with the information needed, "and escort our guests to... V-deck. They're to be kept incommunicado, separate cells. Oh..." the Terran added, "and check them for sub-vocals. I really don't want them talking to each other. Rafe, Tabea," he nodded his dismissal towards them, "we get in touch as soon as we can reach Rhade. Rommdoll, I'll be in Dylan's... I'll be in **my** office."

"Aye, Captain! Lancers Burton and Nantchev, please accompany me as I show our guests to their quarters" the ship answered, her words reaching only his back as he turned away and walked towards the captain's office at a brisk pace, silently sighing as he had noticed both his mistake as well as Rommie's discreet way of covering up for him. _Military_, he thought, once more a bit exasperated with the procedures as well as with himself. _What would I do without Rommie...!?_


	18. Chapter 17

Thanks to everyone reviewing.

**Squid109, thank you very much for the hard work. And the time and support. Just thank you!**

**Chapter 17**

The silence weighed heavily in the _Andromeda_'s briefing room. Everyone attending the conference was disappointed, worried, strained, while Harper was in addition to that almost exhausted.

-

Apart from being easy to defend, uninhabited and featuring 3 planets with pleasant or tolerable life supporting conditions, the Illion System presented the Dragans also with the incommensurable advantage of being about as far away from the RSCW's homeworld as possible. Even at maximum speed it had required 15 slip jumps and slightly over 2 days to come within real time communication range with Terrazed.

Covering a distance of several thousand parsecs in such a short time had been a daunting task, especially with a new, rather inexperienced crew aboard. Although he hadn't been in the slipstream pilot's chair himself, the _Andromeda_'s acting captain hadn't dared leave command when they weren't in normal space. In the brief respites between the jumps he had been able to find no more than a couple of hours rest, which in addition to all of his other worries had brought Rommie down on him.

Shortly before reaching Terrazed, Harper had exploded when he saw her in front of the captain's office, carrying a tray with a glass of milk, some sandwiches and a salad.

„For crying out loud, Rommie, will you stop behaving like my mother! I'm not a child."

„No but you are my captain," the beautiful avatar responded, sounded slightly offended.

„So is Dylan. And often enough Beka. Were you following them around with trays of food and a chron listing their ‚resting periods', as well?"

„They're not pushing themselves the way you are, Harper," Rommie answered him reproachfully.

„You're kidding!" Harper stared at her, flabbergasted. „You mean, Dylan and Beka always keep their hours, respect the schedules, take no more than one  
shift in a row... while fighting the Abyss, Magog, Niets, solving crises, conducting peace talks?"

They entered the captain's office and she carefully placed the tray on a small table in front of a couch, sitting down herself and patting the spot next to  
her lightly with her hand. He gave her a scowl. „Yeah, well, yet another department where the puny kludge falls short..."

„Harper, stop that nonsense. Of course they haven't. But they weren't stretching themselves as thin as you are, either!" _And they don't have your precarious health to begin with_, she thought, though she wisely refrained from speaking her mind loud on this subject.

„Seamus, I'm responsible to see to it that my captain is healthy," she briefly closed her eyes before continuing, "something I don't seem to be doing very well lately." _And I'll be damned if I'm going to risk my third commanding officer in as many weeks,_ she silently added to herself. She opened her eyes and continued, her voice gentle: „Even if I weren't, as your friend, worrying about and caring for you comes natural to me.".

The young man felt his resistance melting under her warm brown gaze as her eyes met his. He sat down beside her and grabbed himself a sandwich. „I'm sorry, Rommdoll, it's just that..."

„I know, even I am... edgy, testy, like sitting on hot coals..." She was relieved to see a wide grin spreading on his face.

„I really am a genius, aren't I? An android feeling like sitting on hot coals..." She couldn't suppress a laughter.

„Oh yes, you are a genius. I wish we had more time..." She stopped, suddenly sober again.

In a gesture of understanding, Harper lightly squeezed her arm. „I know, Rommdoll, so do I. How do Dylan and Beka just stand all this tedious babysitting the crew, drills and training and monitoring, and paperwork and overseeing every damn' bit of... of everything taking place on this ship?"

„I don't know," she confessed. „I've often wondered. But then again, there are two of them, I guess. While you're on your own."

„Not for long, Rommdoll, not for long," Harper stated, trying to sound a lot more convinced than he actually felt.

-

Unfortunately, the briefing did nothing to justify the conviction Harper had displayed earlier on. With only Rommie, Rafe and Harper sitting around the long glass table the place looked quite deserted. The impression was softened somewhat by Rhade's and Doyle's presence, who joined them on screen shortly thereafter. At least the long journey back to Terrazed had given Doyle enough time to meet with Rhade, so that she could hear first hand what Rafe had to tell them. They were joined by Tri-Lorn, who - having been informed by the governor of Terrazed of the _Andromeda_'s current predicament - immediately agreed to join the meeting.

Sadly Rafe could tell them very little that was useful. He didn't know what the Dragans wanted with Beka, where they kept the _Maru_ and what  
the nature of the business they were proposing to his sister or how he had managed to get clear of Illion unscathed. Nor did he have a clue about Dylan's plan to get them off Myrmidon. The only useful information he had was the location of the compound where the Niets held Beka.

„...he just said that he would get Beka; the two of them would get to the _Maru _and would sneak out of Illion. And he wanted you to inform the CW and alert the fleet. Dylan said that he would like at least two heavy cruisers and three or four close combat ships to stand by together with the _Andromeda_."

When Rafe dropped what he thought would be a bombshell: the fact that Jonah Draeger was alive and well and somehow an interested party in this entire mess, three bombs turned out to be a dud. The name meant nothing to Tri-Lorn, and Rommie's knowledge of what had happened with Draeger was limited to the official report files in her databanks, where there was no mention of Beka's more intimate contacts with the former owner of Drago-Corp.

Harper and Doyle had heard of him, of course. However, since Harper had conducted all of his business more or less through Marika at that time, the engineer had never had an occasion to meet with the most powerful business tycoon of the whole Seefran System. In an event the shipping magnate didn't have the habit of meeting with his clients, unless of course they were very powerful and high-placed ones, a category rather scarce in the Seefra system and one for which Harper, and consequently Doyle, didn't qualify at that time. When Jonah Draeger disappeared from the Seefran ‚stage', they hadn't really given the fact more then a distracted thought. Drago-Corp had come crashing down and the only thing the inhabitants of the Seefran System felt was annoyance that the transportation and cargo system, already slow and inadequate, had become even more inefficient, than it already was. Harper and Doyle had been as indifferent as the average Seefrean and later, after rejoining the crew of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, they had not been filled in on all the juicy details. Beka never spoke to Harper, much less to Doyle, about Jonah. Dylan merely told them to read the log-files, which simply stated that the _Andromeda Ascendant_ had been reclaimed from Drago-Corp by her three senior officers and that, due to an accidental explosion on board, the spacecraft transporting the Drago-Corp personnel back to the surface of Seefra 1 was destroyed, leaving no survivors.

Rafe didn't have much experience with the Nietzschean way of displaying emotion, otherwise he would have identified the blank, icy expression  
on Rhade's face for what it was: pure, unadulterated shock.

Telemachus Rhade was the only one present who knew the truth. He remembered. Remembered Beka's quiet contentment, when they had spied on her and Jonah before their presence had been noticed, his own anger at finding out that once again she hadn't hesitated to choose her interests above those of the _Andromeda_ and her crew. She hadn't know they had survived, and he hadn't acted any differently, but he remembered his rage at seeing them together. He remembered Dylan, once more hurt, furious... and in denial. And he remembered how the captain's reaction had affected and endangered them all.

-

They dismissed Rafe and sat in silence, digesting the news he had given them. After a minute or two, Tri-Lorn cleared his throat:

„Ladies and gentlemen,", he said "I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure what to make of this."

„Back in the days when Tarn-Vedra was cut from slipstream, Jonah Draeger was a very powerful figure in the system. Captains Hunt and Valentine had...  
disagreements with him, and it resulted in Mr. Draeger's untimely death," Rhade offered an explanation, sounding as if he was reading a mission log.

„Or so we thought," Doyle cut in, her melodious voice carrying a small hint of regret. Whether about the fact that their ‚disagreements' had caused a primature death or rather because their assumption had turned out to be false, no one could tell.

„I see," Tri-Lorn commented, the look on his face clearly indicating that he didn't see anything at all. „Unfortunately, the information Captain Valentine's brother provided us with does not seem very... substantial. Certainly not substantial enough to risk starting a war with the Drago-Katzov." Compared to the triumvir's tone, a desert seemed a humid, lively place.

„I suppose this means, that we won't get the support requested by Dylan," Rommie said striving to keep her voice level.

„Not right now, anyway," Tri-Lorn had to admit. „I will however permit the _Andromeda_ to leave Terrazed orbit on a patrol mission close to the Illion  
System. You may wait there for your shipmates. If they don't show up in two weeks time, we'll discuss this matter further."

While Rhade's and the two avatars' faces remained immobile, Harper looked at his supreme commander, his expression nothing less than furious.

„Two weeks? What do you mean: two weeks?"

„That would be fourteen days, Mr Harper," Terrazed's governor interrupted; his stern look and sarcastic comment were obviously an attempt to bully the _Andromeda_'s captain into silence. As was to be expected, it didn't work.

„You **can** count!" Harper's rage shifted from Tri-Lorn to Rhade.

„Gentlemen, please!" The triumvir tried to hide his amusement, knowing the moment to be highly inappropriate for it. „As entertaining as this is, I must leave. Commonwealth business won't stop, not even on behalf of its founders' sake. Please keep me posted on every new development and let me know if I can be of further assistance." The screen that had shown Tri-Lorn's face went black.

„Assistance, my ass!" Harper exclaimed. „Rhade, please, do something! Do you have any idea how many times Beka and Dylan could be killed and buried in  
two weeks?"

„I believe I do, Harper," the Nietzschean replied in a low voice, that showed his concern. „Nonetheless, the triumvir is right – we don't have enough substantial information on this. We need more,".

„D minus zero, Captain, remember?" Rommie gently urged him.

„I do, Rommdoll, I do," Harper sighed tiredly. He rubbed his face with both his hands, finally resting them behind his neck, supporting his head. „And  
while we are merrily d-minus-zeroing along, Dylan and Beka get... the Divine knows what in a system squirming with Dragans. This Jonah Draeger business..."  
he asked, his attention shifting from his ship's avatar to Rhade, „what is it all about?" Unlike Beka's brother, Harper was well accustomed to Nietzschean display of emotion; Rhade's frozen reaction had not been lost on him.

There was a moment of silence before Rhade replied. „I think we should discuss this under more private circumstances," he said.

Harper looked surprised. „More private than the four of us?" he asked.

„More private like in Doyle and me joining you aboard the _Andromeda_," Rhade elaborated.

Thoughtfully, Harper nodded. „That private, huh? Governor, Lieutenant-Commander, it will be a pleasure to have you aboard. Harper out."

-

They sat in Harper's quarters that he had set up in one of the _Andromeda_'s workshops, vast rooms overcrowded with all sorts of engineering equipment, half-finished scientific projects and mechanical devices of unknown origin and use. Rommie and Doyle were unimpressed by the stuff surrounding them, while Rhade, wearing casual clothes instead of the imposing governor's attire he had worn during the meeting, looked around himself with incredulous eyes.

„Harper, how do you find your way around this mess?"

„You really want to know?" Rommie asked ironically, one of her eyebrows almost touching her hairline.

„On second thought..." Rhade's voice trailed off. Doyle smiled a quiet little grin at his attempt to joke. Only Harper didn't react in any way whatsoever, his eyes focusing on Rhade's face.

„_Andromeda_, engage privacy mode. Get to the point, Rhade," he urged.

The Nietzschean sighed heavily.

„Jonah Draeger is bad news." He paused a little. „Jonah Draeger and Beka are..." Again, his voice trailed off, this time around on a more stressed note. Rommie's eyes widened.

„Major bad news," the _Andromeda_'s avatar concluded his sentence for him.

„Well, at least Dylan's around and can help sort things out – hopefully," Doyle filled in, in a feeble attempt to console her friends. As if  
on cue, all three heads turned around and faced her, three pair of eyes looking at the beautiful android with an uncanny similar expression of... of what she  
couldn't quite make out. „Doesn't he?" Doyle then asked, sounding as uncertain as a fashion designer commenting on a wrestling match. They kept staring at her. „What?"

„Well," Harper was dragging his words, „if Draeger and Beka are major bad news, Draeger, Beka and Dylan are probably a catastrophe of galactic  
dimensions." His eyes searched for Rhade's, silently begging him to prove him wrong on this matter. Unfortunately, the Nietzschean merely nodded.

„Why?"

„Short version? Because," the annoyed Nietzschean answered, „Beka and Draeger were... an issue once, before we found Beka and the Andromeda in the  
Seefra System. When Dylan found out, he dropped his guard and let himself get caught by Draeger's goons. Beka didn't inform Draeger of Dylan's identity, he found out by himself who he was and felt betrayed by Beka. Beka felt betrayed by Draeger – and Dylan, Draeger attempted to make her choose between the two of them, Dylan got mad, Beka got madder, Draeger tried to kill us all with Trance's help... It's another long story," he hastily threw in upon seeing their eyes widen. „Anyway, while Draeger fled from the Andromeda after firing a missile with poisonous gas at us, Beka freed Dylan and the two of them started to just bite each other's heads off, while the missile was coming straight at us. Fortunately, they stopped long enough to make Trance save us, but I've never seen them so angry at each other as they were because of Jonah Draeger."

„I suppose there was a bit more to it than just Jonah," replied Rommie quietly.

„Possibly." Rhade shrugged his shoulders. „But whatever there was, they both lost it over him. I mean, we were minutes away from a horrible death, yet they couldn't focus on staying alive, they had to argue with each other instead. I had to literally separate them." He shook his head in amazement, remembering.

„Is Jonah Nietzschean?" Doyle asked.

„Not that I know of," Rhade said.

„So then what's he doing with the Dragans? And who is this other guy?" Harper asked in frustration. They looked at each other at a loss for answers.

„If Rafe doesn't know..." Rommie began.

„Like I said, we need more information. With your permission, Captain," Rhade turned to Harper, „ Lieutenant Commander Doyle and myself would like to join you on this mission."

With a smile, the young officer nodded his consent.

„A pleasure to have you along, Governor. Now, everybody get accommodated. Your quarters have been left untouched. Rhade, there is a lot of distance to be covered until we're back near Illion. If you could do the piloting?"

„Aye, Captain!" With a crisp salute, Telemachus Rhade turned and headed for the door.

„Doyle," continued Harper, "as soon as you're settled, you're on duty supervising the crew."

„I'll get back to you in a couple of minutes." Nodding slightly, the blonde android left the room.

„Rommie..."

„I know, Captain. Check and triple-check all systems, analyze all data on the Dragans and Illion, gather all information on Jonah Draeger, plot multiple possible courses of action once we engage the Dragans. Aye, Captain!"

„That's my girl!"

She frowned, remembering Dylan having used exactly the same words to her. But then she smiled and lightly hugged a startled Harper, who let himself be wrapped in her arms after a slight moment of hesitation. Putting his arms around her as well, he rested his chin on her shoulder.

„Rommie?"

„Hmm?"

„We are so screwed!"


	19. Chapter 18

Thank you all, who review - or let me know otherwise that you like or think about this story.

Thanks, Natta, for regularly inquiring.

**And heartfelt thanks, squid109, for being the incredible beta-reader you are.**

**Chapter 18  
**  
Jonah Draeger was not pleased with his Commonwealth prize. In spite of the precarious situation he was in, Dylan Hunt had openly defied him, showing the same annoying, unreasonably self-confident attitude he had displayed during their previous encounter. While Beka Valentine had, once again, unhesitatingly stood unwavering by the High Guard officer, now backed up by her new authority as the Nietzschean Matriarch.

His options were limited. He could order the Nietzscheans around, could argue with Paul Musseveni about taking this or that course of action, but he couldn't make Beka step back from a position she took, not unless she wanted to do so. A man used to playing complicated games of power and finance, Draeger was a realist who carefully waged his chances before picking a fight. As the ‚founding father' of the Dragan pride he could rest assured that his orders would be obeyed to the letter. His authority as well as Paul's were a weight to be taken into account. On smaller matters, however, Beka – the untouchable, almost sacred ‚Mother of all Nietzscheans' – could ask for nearly anything; and every Nietzschean obeyed. Attempting to take Dylan Hunt away from Beka was therefore not advisable at the moment. Draeger might... or might not have succeeded with ordering his three soldiers to go against Beka's wishes, but considering the consequences if they didn't obey his orders against the personal satisfaction he would have gained if they did obey, he didn't feel the need to test them on this matter . There would come another time, a time when Beka would be distracted enough not to be able to step between him and his goals, when Draeger knew that he would get his five minutes alone with the captain of the _Andromeda_. Until then, he saw no need to heat things up between himself and Beka. Nevertheless, he was not amused with the delay.

The Seefran remembered well his weeks in the company of Captain Rebbekah Valentine. Right from the start, she had awed him with her courage, her shrewdness and her tenacity. At night he had been overwhelmed by Beka's beauty and expertise at love-making, while his days had been made even more colorful by her quick wit, her disrespectful manner and her adaptability to every situation. When he had said that he believed having her to be an even better deal than having the _Andromeda_, Jonah had meant every word of it. But she had lied to him, when they had brought in Dylan; and Draeger hadn't come as far as he had by trusting people regardless of their deeds, not even beautiful women he was in love with. Although Beka was by far the one person he had loved most in his life, he hadn't let this fact overcloud his judgment. Instead, he had opted to put her to the test, a test she failed, as he saw it. And her refusal to abide by his conditions, choosing Dylan over him (Jonah Draeger hadn't believed her for one second, when she told him that from now on she was only caring for herself) had insulted him deeply. Still, leaving her to die aboard the _Andromeda_ together with Dylan Hunt had been the most painful decision of his life. The fact that she survived, while he barely made it, losing his wealth, his power, his health and almost his life in the process, had added humiliation to the pain. So Draeger now resented Beka Valentine in an almost fanatical manner.

But he still remembered how it had felt to love her and knew that he would long for that feeling for the rest of his life. In the weeks and months he had spent recovering from his wounds, in a hidden compound on Seefra 1, where Paul Musseveni – the one who had found his damaged escape capsule and its gravely injured passenger – had brought him to, Draeger had vowed that he would make Beka and Hunt pay for this knowledge, the painful memories, his wasted life. Yet now that this time was near, he found himself strangely reluctant to pursue this course.

Draeger was angry with himself. He couldn't make up his mind, couldn't sort out his contradictory feelings, couldn't find some much needed rest from the thoughts assailing him. Lying flat on his back on a bunk in the crew's quarters, his hands behind his neck, his forehead covered by a thin layer of perspiration, hoping that everything will go like planned, yet somehow – knowing Valentine and Hunt – fearing that something unexpected will happen in the process, impatiently waiting for his associate to arrive, the former owner of Drago-Corp became more and more unhappy by the minute.

„ Looking for some peace and quiet, my friend?" A shadow fell on Jonah Draeger's face as he heard the always slightly excited voice utter the question. He looked up noticing the man who had just entered the small place.

„I wish," he muttered, sounding a little harsh.

„Oo-hoo! I recognize from your tone of voice that the old Hunt-charm is already at work. Annoying fellow, isn't he?"

„Arrogant bastard," Draeger nodded, sitting up and lowering his feet to the deck.

„To put it mildly," the newcomer acquiesced.

He was not as tall as Draeger, but was much more sturdily built. He appeared to be 35-40 years older, but in outstanding shape for a man his age. Only his face bore proof of the passing of time, criss-crossed with lines and wrinkles, the nose a prominent blade, his hair and short-cut beard still of a dark blond shade, as were his eyebrows. The small brown eyes however were sparkling with life, irony and alertness. Well over 80 years old, Paul Musseveni looked remarkably well and alert, still displaying the boyish, exuberant manner that had been his characteristic trait in his younger years.

„Where have you been? What took you so long?" the Seefran asked him wearily.

„I was in the lab. Finishing the new bots for Beka. I altered them slightly, as the last flight provided some interesting information regarding a decrease in effect after the first four activations, this time."

„Fascinating," Draeger murmured ironically.

„Fascinating indeed!" Paul Musseveni insisted, sounding no less ironical than his partner. Seeing the other man's bemused expression, he offered an explanation:

„While on our first trip the desired effects started to wear off shortly after the first two shots, requiring Beka to activate more and more nanobots in shorter periods of time, however on the trip back the duration of the flash-caused alertness was nearly doubled."

„Meaning?"

„Meaning that there really must be a way to control the consumption and thus the addiction to the drug. I just haven't found it yet. You know, I really had hoped that it would be Mr. Harper coming to look for Beka. I was somewhat disappointed when I saw Hunt..."

„Do tell!" Judging from his tone, Jonah Draeger's disposition hadn't improved and was rapidly plummeting further when reminded of the High Guard officer.

„Mr. Harper's ingenuity would have come in handy and he would have triggered Beka's protective instincts just as well as Rafe or our esteemed captain. Yet, one must not complain. We'll work with what we have."

Paul Musseveni walked across the crew's quarters and over into the attached bar and poured himself a drink.

„Can I offer you anything?" he casually asked the Seefran, who shook his head 'no'.

„Did Rafe and Tabea make it to the Andromeda?" Paul inquired after taking a long sip from his glass.

„Well, they made it off Myrmidon and out of the Illion System," Jonah confirmed . A small smile broke through on his darkened features, that triggered a grin as enthusiastic as ever from Paul Musseveni.

„I take it that Rafe is still clueless?"

„Of course," Draeger nodded, „of course!"

„Well then, let's join captains Valentine and Hunt on command, shall we?" He turned towards the cockpit, politely waving the Seefran to take the lead.

The two men walked the short distance in silence, Jonah Draeger lost in his thoughts and still brooding gloomily, while Musseveni wore a highly amused and happy expression of a small boy eagerly awaiting his birthday presents on his face. It was an expression Draeger found disconcerting, and slightly frightening...

-

They exited the Illion system without any trouble and smoothly slid through four slipstream jumps until they finally reached the outskirts of their destination. In this particular case ‚outskirts' was a rather abusively used notion, as they still were more than a three hours-flight through normal space away from where they were headed to.

The Crimean System was set even further away from Terrazed than Illion, a remote system of the Milky Way, seemingly as far out that it appeared closer to the Bendon Quasar than to anything else. The nearest celestial body to it was a magnetar and so it was exposed to all kinds of trouble the distant star threw at it, which didn't improve matters much. Traveling to the system was a highly unpleasant business. With gravitational instabilities popping out all over the place and electromagnetic radiation making instruments go nuts most of the time, flights through Crimeea were mainly to be done on gut instinct, something no one in his right mind would have recommended in space travel.

While human instinct provided the necessary bit needed to master slipstream, it made out only a tiny, if indispensable, fraction of the required skills necessary to pilot a starship. Flying through normal space, however, was a different matter altogether. One simply couldn't trust just instincts or eyesight, relying upon noticing everything that might or might not be crossing one's path without the help of instruments. In consequence, whenever systems appeared – for whatever reasons – not stable enough to ensure a proper use of instruments, they were simply classified as unchartered territory and avoided.

Traveling the Crimean system was therefore a highly demanding, nearly impossible task, one that was to be carried out with caution.

_Or preferably not at all_, Dylan thought as he watched Beka focusing again on her job.

„Beka..." he quietly inquired. „Please, don't do it, Beka!"

She threw him a quick glance, again careful not to let the guard notice that they were somehow communicating .

„Scared?" she asked him ironically, one of her eyebrows raised in a quizzical manner.

He nodded imperceptibly.

„Terrified, actually."

„Don't be. We'll be fine. I can do this."

„But at what cost, Beka? Is it really worth it?" He was standing close enough to see the small vein on her temple begin to throb angrily, as her temper threatened to gain the better of her, once again.

She leaned back into the chair, her arms falling down to her sides, her eyes closed in frustration. She slowly turned her head around to watch him, a curious, amazed, almost incredulous look in her wide-opened eyes.

„Worth it? Gee, I don't know, Dylan. I have really no idea at all whether it is worth it to stretch myself and the _Maru _to our very limits, just so that Peter and Jonah spare your life."

„Oh, come on, Beka, they won't kill me. Nor will they damage the _Maru_. Because if they do so they wouldn't have anything left to blackmail you with."

„Maybe, but if I make it clear that I won't take them into the Crimeean System nor all the way through to Ral Parthia, they wouldn't see any point in leaving you, the _Maru _– or **me**, for that matter, intact. Wouldn't you agree?"

„But if you do it, it will send you back to using flash; and that will kill you just as certainly as Peter and Jonah, only a little more slowly."

„'More slowly', Dylan," Beka angrily stated, „is good. ‚More slowly' is even very good. Because ‚more slowly' is all we have right now. It might buy us time to come up with a plan to get out of this alive and well, and in one piece. And if it doesn't, well then we're no worse off than we are right now."

He shrugged his shoulders, seemingly defeated. But then he reconsidered.

„We could at least try it out."

„Try it out?" Beka looked at him with a puzzled look upon her face. „Try what out?"

„You could refuse. Just to see what happens!"

„Are you out of your mind?"

Dylan looked at her pleadingly.

„You're the Matriarch. By the look of it, even the Dragans now accept this as a fact. They would never hurt you. And they need the _Maru_, if they want to fly this ride at all."

„It still leaves you in harm's way."

„Yeah, but I can take it. I don't think they would kill me just to prove a point. At the very least, Jonah would feel compelled to deliver a more thorough explanation about what it is that they really want."

Shaking her head dismissively, Beka returned to her panels and focused her attention back to piloting.

„I told you what they want. They want a new, more skilled, more powerful Nietzschean race. And time. Probably because they want to take over the Commonwealth. I just haven't found out how they plan to do it. You're right, they wouldn't hurt me. Peter needs me to fly, for his experiments, his tests, his..." she stopped for a second, but then went on disgusted, „his breeding program. But they have other ships. They could dismantle the _Maru_. And you..." Her voice trailed off.

„You say, you don't think that they would kill you just to prove a point, but do you really think that I would let them harm you, just to prove another?" She turned to look at him, and this time he could see tears gleaming in her eyes. „Dylan, if this is the kind of person that you think I am, then why have you put up with me for all these years?" Furiously wiping the tears away, she returned her attention to the monitors in front of her, slowly setting the _Eureka Maru_ into motion.  
A bitter laugh escaped her lips. „Come to think of it, I really should have known it. Under the circumstances, it's no wonder that you never found it in your heart to trust me to the end."

The Andromeda's captain watched his XO speechlessly. He hadn't meant it like that. He just wanted to... _Why does everything I say to Beka come out the wrong way?_ he asked himself helplessly. A pensive expression crept into his eyes. _Maybe it isn't me. Maybe it is her. Maybe she misunderstands... on purpose. Deliberately. _He sighed in frustration. _Then again, maybe not...  
_  
It was a painful moment, neither of them in the mood to start clarifying the issues between them. Somehow though there never had been a best moment for that. Whenever they had tried, something had always occurred which demanded immediate attention, and so for years they had just carried on, pushing everything aside in order to achieve some most important goal or other. Even during the last months they... **he** had never found the time to push everything else aside and sort things out with Beka. Nor, if he was to be honest, had he found the courage.

And so, no longer caring about the inappropriateness of both time and place, Dylan Hunt shoved all objections he might have been able to think of aside, took a deep, deep breath and plunged all ahead full into what was probably the bravest act of his entire life.

„Beka," he softly called to her, his voice little more than a rough, strained whisper. Her head twisted to the side to look at him, noticing the strange tone in his voice. She saw him watching her, his eyes wide open, his face a ghostly white. „Beka," he said again, „I do trust you with everything I have and everything I am. I trust you with my life. And I do think that you are the most wonderful, enchanting, unique kind of person that I have ever met."

She gasped. Then gasped some more.

"You never told me that..."

"That's not true! I did... Time and time again!" he protested.

"Not in so many words..."

"Beka," he pleaded intensely. "I don't have that many words. I used to, but..." he shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "I don't have them anymore. Somewhere in between Gaheris, Tyr, Stark, the Vedrans... the words I used to have once just... just seem to have fled me." His tone became pleading. "Try to understand: part of being a good commanding officer - hell, sometimes I think the most important part of it - is being a good judge of character, especially when it comes to the people you serve with. As far as this is concerned my record seems more than flawed... I... I just don't trust myself to speak up on these matters. I don't even trust myself to muse about it much. What if I come up with the wrong conclusion... again?" He took a deep breath. "But that doesn't change the way I think, I feel about you - all of you. Surely by now you know that."

Beka eyed him in a distant, weighing sort of way. For once Dylan did not try to avoid her eyes. He looked at her straightforward, open - and a bit defeated. And then she started smiling that lopsided, irreverent, sharky grin of hers.

„Of all the times and places you could have told me that..."

„I know," he interrupted her, now himself feeling an irrepressible urge to laugh out loud relieved, „I know, but I just..."

„You chickened out," she chuckled. For an instant they just looked at each other, their eyes almost flowing over with laughter, relief and trust.

And then Beka turned serious.

„We'll think of something, Dylan, we'll make it out of here."

It was quite amazing. Against his better judgment, he felt a rush of confidence sweeping through him as he heard her reassure him. He quietly smiled at her.

„Aye, Captain Valentine!" And if he wouldn't have feared the sound of his chains rattling would have drawn the Nietzschean's attention, he would have saluted. Whatever was to come, captain and first officer of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ and the _Eureka Maru_ were in this together; and they would make it through.


	20. Chapter 19

**Squid109, thanks a lot for the beta, the suggestions - just about everything.  
**(All mistakes, that might still be somewhere, are mine and mine alone.)

**Chapter 19**

„My love, I trust that everything goes accordingly to our plans?" The boyish, exuberant voice coming from the cockpit's entrance startled them both and caused them to break their eye contact. Hidden behind the high back of her seat, Beka simply returned to her task, while Dylan turned his gaze towards the doors, carefully attempting to avoid any display of emotion. His eyes though widened in surprise upon noticing the aged figure that was now approaching him, followed by a quiet Jonah Draeger.

„Dylan, it seems we're to meet again!"

„I told you I'll be seeing you on the other side," the captain of the _Andromeda _replied, his mocking tone matching Musseveni's.

„Yes," the old man laughed, „yes, so you told me... Beka," he then inquired more sharply, „you haven't answered my question."

Giving the navigation systems additional data, she switched the _Maru _over to auto-pilot and rose to her feet.

„Paul!" she exclaimed, her head nodding a crisp salute towards the two new-comers. „We should be reaching the Crimeean System within the next three hours."

„Can't we make it faster?"

Beka mustered him ironically.

„Not unless you want to end up with some unaccounted for cosmic junk planted in our hull. At best," she concluded aloof.

He gave her a small frown, as always carefully avoiding to show his disappointment too openly. Disappointment meant trouble, trouble meant defeat, so showing disappointment meant that one's plans hadn't succeeded as intended. Whatever happened, Paul Musseveni never seemed too disconcerted by anything one told him.

„I was merely inquiring. Whatever you judge best, my dear," he replied, politely bowing to her, two lines of white teeth showing in his beard. The pilot shook her head, a knowing smile turning up the corners of her mouth slightly.

„Ah, those survival instincts, you just have to love them!" Hunt's voice was dripping with sarcasm. Paul Musseveni turned to him, his arms opening wide. Behind his back, he could feel Jonah Draeger stiffening up with disapproval.

„Dylan, Dylan, Dylan..." the old man shook his head in a reproachful manner. „Still haven't learned to rein in this quick tongue of yours, I see."

„Well, it does seem that I had much less time to learn than you, Peter... I mean, Paul... What did you do with Mary?" Blank looks met Dylan's eyes, both Paul and Jonah clearly at a loss. He laughed, joined in by Beka, who was giggling softly. She stepped closer to him.

„It's an... it's an Earth thing!" she tried a meager attempt at explaining. Together, the two High Guard officers laughed mockingly at the other two men. Leaning closer to Dylan, Beka couldn't help teasing even further: "What is it Harper said? 'Make love, not war'?" Still laughing, she winked at the two men:

"Actually that is both your line's of approach... You should have stuck with it. This war-business you don't seem quite so skilled at, right? Didn't turn out so well, did it now?" she then grinned. Dylan frowned a bit, but then couldn't help smiling. Reminding them of the fact that they both had loved her, making fun of them: it could drive them apart, it could work as a strange, twisted form of 'Divide et impera'...

Quickly catching up with what the two High Guard officers were trying, Musseveni chuckled. Jonah Draeger, however, had had enough of it. Stepping between them, he grabbed Beka by the throat and began to squeeze. In spite of the chains restraining him, Dylan instinctively kicked into action, ramming his head forward against Jonah's face. Had he been facing the captain, Draeger would have been knocked out by the violent blow. Unfortunately, his head was turned towards Beka, so Dylan only smashed into his right cheekbone. The man let go of Beka, who gasped for air and doubled over in a coughing fit, but he was not out cold. After staggering back a few steps, he whirled around and stormed towards Dylan, who hampered by both the chains and the rail was unable to mount any effective defensive. A thunderstorm of blows and kicks and punches was raining down on him, striking his face, his ribs, his stomach, groin and legs, while his chains proved very effective in preventing him from responding likewise. After what seemed like a little eternity, Dylan started feeling his knees going weak. As the blows kept coming he tried to grab the rail, to hold himself upright, instinctively realizing that, if he was to fall, one of the powerful kicks from Jonah's long, strong legs would sooner or later connect with his head. And that would be really really bad.

Paul Musseveni, who was standing aside, placidly watching the scene, suddenly noticed that Beka, who had recovered from the coughing and choking , was now also watching, appalled about what she was forced to witness.

„Paul, in the name of the Divine, do something!" she pleaded. „He's killing him."

„Don't worry," the old man answered her in an amused tone. „ It takes some time for one to be killed by beating. Believe me, I do know," he then added slowly, "your precious captain saw to it that I learned **that **lesson. And now it's time that he learns it, too." As he spoke, a vicious, vindictive gleam slowly crept into his eyes. Contemptous, Beka watched in horror how his face became distorted by a quite delighted, almost avid smile, as he looked at Dylan, who was clearly growing weaker by the second. Before Paul could prevent her, she launched herself at the two men, attempting in vain to separate them. Beka's hand to hand combat skills were the equivalent to any man's but she realized that, while she was in an perfect position to strike down Draeger as he focused on Dylan, attacking him directly would only make a bad situation worse... And so she simply ran between the two combatants, receiving one of the punches meant for the _Andromeda_'s captain into her own solar plexus. The force of the blow threw her into the bulkhead behind her, the back of her skull connecting with the bulkhead with a dry, low „thump". With what little was left of his eyesight, Dylan noticed Beka being struck down. Forgetting about chains and even about Jonah, he tried in vain to reach her, taking two steps in her direction, which was as far as the leg-cuffs allowed him to advance. His movements caused him to turn his back towards Draeger which was was all the Seefran needed. With a mighty jump, he kicked the High Guard right into his unprotected kidneys, who was thrust forward, his forehead hitting the lower part of the rail with a loud thunk.

The silence that descended onto the _Maru_'s cockpit was almost surreal after the violent noise of the fight. The only sounds that could be heard were the dull sound of Jonah's boots connecting with Dylan's slumped body and the Seefran's soft, low groan, whenever he did so. Ariobarzanes tensed up, his eyes flicking from Musseveni to Draeger as he awaited Musseveni's order calling upon him to prevent Jonah Draeger from kicking the unconscious man further. More and more confused as time was dragging on without the order being issued. He finally intervened on his own accord.

„My Lord," he said to Jonah, reaching for his arm, „I think this is enough." He stepped back a few steps, as the man still running on a battle-high almost tried to kick him, too.

„Easy, my friend," the relieved Nietzschean heard Musseveni say as he walked slowly towards them. „The man is right. I think this will do."

Breathing hard, his fists still clenched, Jonah looked up from the prone body in front of him and threw Paul a look from blood-shot eyes. For a fraction of a second, his face went completely void of all expression. Slightly shaking his head, he glanced around him, taking in his surroundings. Musseveni had in the meantime reached Beka and was checking on her.

„Beka!" Jonah's voice was rough, and he sounded worried.

„You hit her, but don't fret! She just bumped her head. She'll be as good as new!" Paul reassured him. „However, this might postpone our intended trip for a while. But she will be all right," he added while supporting the pilot by her shoulders and lifting her up gently.

A groan of protest greeted the two men, as Beka slowly came to. She lifted her hand, gingerly touching the back of her head while trying to open her eyes at the same time. Neither of her actions proved a good idea. Two sharp daggers seem to push into her eyeballs, while an equally sharp pain blossomed from the spot where her fingers had touched her skull. Something about the arms supporting her shoulders was a bit unfamiliar, but she didn't check, waiting instead for the pain to subside. As it finally ebbed down, she again tried to open her eyes, this time being cautious to just peer through her squeezed eyelids.

„Dylan?" she whispered hoarsely. Damn, her throat hurt, too.

„My love, I am afraid that our esteemed captain is quite unable to be of any service at the moment." Recognizing the voice and suddenly remembering, Beka abruptly jerked up to a sitting position, her eyes opening wide despite the intense pain that was back in full force.

„Peter... Where is Dylan?" She frantically tried to focus, turning her head around in search for Dylan Hunt. She noticed Ariobarzanes and at the far right of the cockpit Jonah, who was turning his back on them.

„Actually, it's Paul. I believe it was this 'lapsus' of yours that got us into this mess in the first place. Oh, never mind... And Dylan, well... is indisposed," Musseveni informed her in an apologetic manner, letting go of her shoulders, rising to his feet and stepping back from her. As he distanced himself from Beka, she noticed an unidentifiable, completely motionless heap lying below the navigation console. She shook her head in a strained attempt to clear her blurred vision. And then she recognized the heap as her commanding officer.

„Dylan!" Not bothering to get up to her feet, Beka crawled over to the prone figure and gently turned him over. Upon seeing him clearly, his XO gasped in shock. His uniform and shirt, even his pants were torn to little more than rags, one of the sleeves practically gone and revealing a right upper arm and shoulder that were nothing more than battered pieces of red meat. His entire upper torso seemed covered by bruises and large, still swelling welts, as she could see through the ripped-off spots in his shirt that bared his skin. While his left arm and hand remained hidden underneath his body, his right hand looked as if at least two of his fingers were either broken or dislocated, judging by their colour and swelling, as well as the weird angle they were canted at. The fabric of one of his trousers' legs was also shredded, showing a deep cut on his left thigh that was bleeding profusely. By far the worst sight of all, however, was his head. It was a bloody mess, his right eye swollen shut, a deep gash above his left eye oozing blood, that caked his entire face, a large bump still growing on his left temple, his cheekbones and jaws covered by abrasions displaying all shades between blue and purple and darkening fast, his nose and lips still bleeding as well.

Beka's hands were flying from one wound to another, fluttering above him like frightened birds. Realizing the futility of her actions, she closed her eyes for an instant, trying to come to terms with the sight in front of her. She then cleared her throat and stood erect. Still a little shaky but standing as straight as she could she looked directly at Ariobarzanes completely ignoring Paul and Jonah.

„Get Yvain and... what's his name?"

„Totila!"

„Totila! Well, I'll be..." She shook her head. „Never mind. Get Yvain and Totila here and help me with him!"

„You want us to help with the kludge?"

Beka's didn't reply to his question but her eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the Dragan, who just stood there, staring at her defiantly. But in the end it was the Nietszchean who looked away, seeming to shrink under her cold gaze, and he hit his comlink, his eyes searching for Paul, who stood behind her left shoulder. Musseveni just nodded.

"Yvain, Totila, the matriarch requests your presence."

„Coming!"

Less than two minutes later the other two soldiers barged into the cockpit. They stopped right where they were, the minute they spotted the unconscious figure on the deck. Yvain's eyes inquisitively searched his colleague's, who shook his head and then cast his eyes in Jonah's direction. The officer's eyes went wide. He clearly approved the damage his ‚ancestor' had inflicted upon his opponent.

„I need him taken over to my quarters," Beka, who hadn't missed the silent exchange, crisply informed them. „Help me along!"

„With a kludge?" Yvain asked as reluctantly as Ariobarzanes had before.

Captain Valentine's teeth flashed up in a wolfish grin. She slowly came closer to him. „Right over there," she hissed nodding towards Musseveni, „stands the kludge who thought you bastards up. And next to him, that would be the one kludge who provided your pride with his genes, while I am all of their pathetic offspring's Matriarch, another kludge whose DNA was spread like some deadly virus throughout the galaxies, creating all of you. Now, you'll help me with ‚the kludge' or I swear I will make you pay for your insubordinates till the day you die." She had expected him to call her bluff, but instead he dropped his gaze and shrugged.

„Ario, Tot, let's do this."

Without further delay, they picked up Dylan's body, two of them taking his legs, while the officer lifted him by a shoulder. As quietly as shadow, Jonah joined the threesome, carefully taking hold of Dylan's other shoulder. Beka opened her mouth, wanting to rebuke him, but then she reconsidered.

„Easy," she ordered the men, placing her hands to support Dylan's neck, after noticing that his head was lifelessly hanging down between his shoulders. As careful as possible in the narrow space, they started moving the High Guard into the _Maru_'s captain's quarters.


	21. Chapter 20

Thank you very much to all reviewers.

**And squid109: thanks a lot for your help! **

**Chapter 20**

He hated shots, which meant that, aside from behaving like a baby whenever confronted with them when he was conscious, he even reacted to them when unconscious. She clearly remembered his wincing as he lay comatose on med-deck after _Andromeda _had been boarded by Magog for the first time under his command. He had been gone, they had barely managed to bring him back, yet when Trance had injected him with nanobots after surgery he had moaned softly in spite of being out cold and filled up to his ears with painkillers and tranquillizers. It hadn't taken the new crew long to find out that the captain would rather face the united Nietzschean prides in combat than suffer through anything medical involving needles. To all aboard the _Andromeda Ascendant _Dylan's dislike for shots was a source of constant amusement.

The fact that the two massive injections of nanobots and painkillers hadn't triggered any reaction from him, frightened Beka more than she cared to admit. For the past hour she had tried her best to attend to his injuries; however, with her medical skills being rather underdeveloped, Beka feared that her best might just not prove good enough. She had stripped him, washed him, cleaned and treated all the open wounds that she could access and now had him safely tucked into a warm blanket. In spite of all her efforts though, Dylan's body had kept that utterly still bonelessness about it only deceased – or nearly deceased – people seemed able to achieve. But for the laboured breathing making his chest rise and fall at irregular and far apart times, the captain of the _Andromeda _looked for all intent and purpose quite dead.

„You did a good job on him," said a low voice from somewhere behind her.

Rebekkah Valentine stiffened, turning her head halfway towards the door and stared coldly at the man who had just entered the cramped compartment.

„So did you." The bitterness in Beka's voice was unmistakable.

Draeger stood quietly on one side of the bed, his downcast eyes silently contemplating his swollen knuckles, already blue and brown with bruises and abrasions. After a moment he lifted his head to meet the woman's gaze, who remained seated on the other side of the bed, watching him in cold contempt.

„Beka, I'm sorry. I... I don't know what came over me. If there is anything I can do..."

„I think you've done enough already," she answered him, unmoved by his apology.

Draeger sighed deeply. He had told her the truth. He **was **sorry for the savage way he had dealt with Hunt. And he **didn't **know how it had come to that.

By nature the Seefran was neither a violent nor a cruel man. He had a lust for power, wanted to dominate – by awe, if possible, by fear, if need be. But he didn't enjoy violence or an excess of brutality, nor did he think them practical. And he had once been a man of certain principles, following a certain code of honor, even if in those days he had made the rules, deciding alone about what was to be included in this code – or not. He didn't mind threatening, cheating, lying, stealing, even killing if and when it suited his purposes. But he preferred his moves to be swift, efficient and elegant, and his challenges to be adequate. Beating a defenseless man into oblivion didn't qualify.

„Beka, I really wish you would understand..." he began anew, struggling for words. „I never would have expected myself to lose it so completely. I guess that it just happened because of all the things he did to me, and because of what you said, too."

The blonde woman eyed him icyly.

„Oh, let me guess: it was all his fault and mine, right? My goodness, who is he... who am I that we might make a little fun of Mr. Jonah Draeger? Is that it? You behave like some kind of barbarian and we're the ones to blame?"

„No, of course not," Draeger exclaimed annoyed. „But for the past two years I had plenty of time to think about the things he did to me..." He didn't get to finish.

„What he did to you?" Beka's voice sounded almost incredulous. **„What **did he do to you? He claimed his ship back, the one I had no right to give you and that you had no right to accept."

„The ship was dead in space; it was open salvage. And you were its first officer! I brought you and it in, had a lot of expenses because the two of you..."

„She was not open salvage once her captain showed up. And my authority as her first officer ends where his begins!"

„Well, why didn't you tell me?"

„Like you would have listened!"

„I might have, had you told me everything from the start. Instead you tried to play me..."

„I did not!"

„Did too!"

„Did not!" Both voices were getting louder by the second. They glared at each other over the bed supporting Dylan's body, Draeger next to the door, Beka close to the bulkhead on the opposite side of it. They looked at each other defiantly, reproachfully and angrily, both breathing heavily. The silence between the two of them dragged on.

„Then why did he suddenly show up?" the man finally asked.

„Because before you found me, I had sent a distress signal."

„That had been weeks ago."

„Do tell!" the Maru's captain said sarcastically. „I was half starved, couldn't recall my way around the ship, let alone the proper codes at once. And the _Andromeda _was... well, reluctant to be of aid would be the understatement of the century. I have no clue why the message reached him when it did! And by the time he got it, I wasn't expecting anyone anymore."

„You didn't think he'd come?"

Beka shot a glance over to Dylan's still frame on the bed. She sighed, but then her eyes shifted back to Jonah.

„I didn't even know that he and all the others had made it to Seefra. But had I known... then yes, I would have thought he'd come. As long as any of them were alive, they would come looking for me." Draeger nodded, quietly respecting that for once she was giving him a straight answer. „The distress signal just said ‚Beka' and some coordinates. I think that by the time it reached him, he must have known how old it was, but still... He'll always come looking for me, and I always knew it!"

„Then why didn't you tell me?"

„Because by the time we met I thought them dead.. And frankly, it was ripping me apart. I preferred not to think about them at all. And then I fell in love with you. When Dylan showed up I was..." her voiced trailed off, but then she cleared her throat. „I was annoyed, afraid of what you might think, scared that I might lose you." Beka laughed a humourless, ironic little laugh.

„I was giving him... all of them up, Jonah, for you!" Her voice was once more getting louder. „You! Of all people! All I was asking for in return was for you to trust me – and to let him live. For that I offered you my ship, the _Andromeda _– and me! You should have made the deal!"

The Seefran looked at her, his eyes opened wide. Then he slowly nodded.

„I should have," he admitted, „I should have, but I didn't. As you should have told me and didn't..."

„Well, you see, I am not much into confessing..."

„Have you ever lied to **him**?" Draeger asked her dryly, cocking his head towards the bed upon hearing her remark.

„I didn't exactly lie to you. And lie to him? Not exactly, either. But I held back information, knowledge..."

„And he put up with it?"

Beka's eyes widened in surprise, their rich blue-grey paling a little as they seemed to go somewhat blank. Looking down on Dylan, she slowly approached the bed and sat down next to him, gazing into the small portion of his face that wasn't covered by one bruise or another.

„Come to think of it," she slowly articulated like a person wrapped up in the process of making a major discovery, „yes! From the very start and to this very day, he always put up with it..." Beka lifted her hand to lazily brush away an imaginary hair from Dylan's naked shoulder. As soon as she touched it, she couldn't suppress a frown. Draeger didn't miss it.

„What's wrong?"

„He's burning up," she answered him, alarm in her voice. Bending over the man on the bed, Draeger removed the blanket with a swift move. The bandage on the captain's thigh was drenched in red, the blood spot on it considerably larger than on the one around his head. As soon as Dylan's lower limbs were revealed, Beka sighed in distress.

„I knew I didn't do it right!" she exclaimed, her hands reaching out to touch his leg almost in a reflex. Jonah Draeger brushed them away.

„Don't blame yourself. Injuries in that region tend to bleed profusely. As do head wounds. We'll better try to clip them; bandaging might not suffice." Tenderly probing Dylan's torso he then added: „It might also prove a good idea to wrap his ribs up solidly. I think that at least two of them are broken. It would help him with his breathing." Jonah straightened himself up and looked questioningly at Beka. She seemed unsure, her eyes drifting from him to Dylan and back again, resting on him with a cautious expression. He could almost see her thoughts reflected in her eyes. He sighed:

„Beka, I really am trying to help here."

„Why should you?" she asked bitterly. „Why didn't you help sooner? Before beating him up? Before capturing us? Before putting this insane plan of yours and Paul's into practice?"

He flinched almost under her accusatory gaze. A couple of months, _hell! a couple of days_ earlier he could have answered her without feeling so much as the shadow of a doubt about the legitimacy of his actions, now he wasn't so sure.

„Shouldn't we save the explanations for later? Let me help you with him," the Seefran urged her one more time, determined to not show his puzzlement about himself, her – the whole situation. Beka threw him another pensive glance, but then nodded an affirmative.

„There must be some clips in medical. At least, I hope there are. Paul's turned the place into a witch-cave." She shook her head in anger. „And he's been using up all available supplies. I had a hard time finding just one more injector with non-altered nanobots for tissue-repair..."

„Aren't they in the boxes left of the scanning panel?" Jonah asked in a puzzled tone.

„Nah, he's altered all of them. I was lucky to think of the one that Trance had placed in the cockpit for emergencies." Beka scrutinized Jonah's face which suddenly looked older. „What?" she asked.

He shook his head slightly. „Nothing. Just a thought."

„What thought?"

„Later. Right now we'd better get him treated. Let's wrap his ribs up first..." Jonah gently lifted Dylan's upper torso and slipped behind him, holding him up against his own body. He blew up his cheeks, surprised.

„Damn, he's heavy, a lot heavier than he looks." Beka left his remark uncommented and pulled up a panel in the bulkhead, removing a large package of elastic fibers that looked like a softly glowing, seemingly half liquid, yet very dense cotton wool. Jonah looked on with intense curiosity.

„That looks weird," he said.

„Yes, but it's effective. Harper and Trance designed it; the fiber can perform superficial scans and adjust its pressure according to the patient's needs. It is also regulating its temperature, producing heat – a permanent hot water bottle in its own right."

„That's... ingenious." Jonah sounded genuinely impressed.

„Yeah, it is," she smiled, her voice clearly betraying her pride at the accomplishments of her long time friends. Her smile faded to be replaced by a look of concentration as she began dexterously wrapping the fabric around Dylan, who remained a dead weight in Jonah's arms, his body staying as still and limp throughout the procedure as it had been before.

„He's so hot," she murmured. „And he doesn't even sweat. Why isn't he sweating?"

„Well, the sweating, I guess... The fever just started and it might take a while before it breaks again. As to being feverish at all: sometimes people suffering such kind of... trauma," Jonah offered slowly, „have their pleura hurt... That's why I'm so impressed by this stuff; your captain really needs all the warmth he can get. In case he developed a pleurisy." Beka shook her head, not entirely sure that she understood all of his explanations, but too upset to ask for more medical details.

„Not that quickly, no. Dylan is..." she hesitated.

„Well?"

„He's genetically altered. One of his parents was from a heavy gravity world; and the other one was..." She seemed at a loss for words. „I don't know, somehow made special by the Vedrans. I never really understood it, but fact is, Dylan's tough. He can take a lot, and that he is already developing a fever..." Beka's voice trailed off. „I've seen him look more alive while he was lying dead," she concluded worriedly.

„Whatever," Jonah told her in a low voice, easing himself up from behind Dylan and gently releasing the man from his grasp and back on the bed. „I'll be back in a second. Just fetching the clips and looking for some more unaltered nanobot-injectors and painkillers."

„Good luck!" Beka exclaimed. „But you won't find any."

He just shrugged his shoulders on his way out of the door.


	22. Chapter 21

Thank you all for reviewing.

_Squid109, **you**__... I have no adequate way to thank **you **for your tremendous help._

**Chapter 21**

The doors to the tiny medical ward were locked.

„Paul, are you in there?" Jonah Draeger asked after activating the comlink. He didn't receive an answer.

„Paul...?" Beneath the deck he was standing on, heavy booted steps made a metal ladder ring sonorously. Leaning over the rail the Seefran peered down beneath him, noticing Musseveni climbing up towards him.

„The doors to Medical..." he stated. The old man looked up to him and raised his brows inquisitively.

„What of them?"

„They're locked."

„I have a couple of experiments going on. I figured it was safer that way."

„Safer from what?" Hauling himself over on the catwalk, Paul Musseveni just shrugged.

„From whatever! I don't want any interruption. What do you want in Medical?"

„Supplies," Jonah calmly stated.

„Oh, have you hurt yourself?" The octogenarian's tone was slightly mocking. „Let me see... Your hands?" He tried to grab for Draeger's hands, but the taller man withdrew.

„My hands are fine. I need some wound clamps, though."

Musseveni's eyes narrowed.

„What for?"

„What does it matter?" Jonah asked annoyed by the interrogation. The men's eyes locked, and then Musseveni nodded slowly.

„Ha!" he exclaimed amused. „The human conscience... Such a frail construction!"

Jonah's gaze didn't waver.

„Would you open up, please?" he asked, his voice quite even. „I promised to help Hunt."

„I thought you already did that," the Nietzschean procreator murmured ironically. „This is Rebekkah's doing, right? She talked you into it." It wasn't a question.

„I talked myself into it." Relieved, Jonah saw Paul enter a code into the doors' cipher lock.

„How so?" the elder man asked, sounding rather casual.

The doors hissed open and both men strode into what was originally the _Eureka Maru_'s tiny medical facility, now turned into an overcrowded lab filled with buzzing, whirling, humming devices Jonah couldn't recognize.

„I like what you've done to the place," he commented dryly. Musseveni chuckled.

The last time Jonah had entered what Paul now called his lab, Musseveni hadn't been so deep into his research. On the first trip taken by Beka to Ral Parthia they had taken quite a beating, as the _Maru_'s captain had tried to stay clear from flash for as long as possible. Eventually, she had given in to fatigue and while in slipstream rammed the Maru against the magnetically charged borders of the slipstream tunnel. Draeger had hit his shoulder and had come to Medical, where Paul injected him with nanobots to heal him. It had looked very usual, the way all medical facilities of not very fancy starships were adorned: a bio-bed in the middle of it that could be used as an operating table if need be, complete with scanning, anesthetic, infusion- and surgery-devices all around it, with drawers inserted all over the bulkhead, equipped with everything necessary in case of an emergency, leaving room for one patient and three other persons at max. It bore no resemblance with what he saw now.

The bio-bed was gone. He looked around taking in the chaos, his head shaking in disgust upon noticing transparent plexi jars, blurred with cryovapors, but not blurred enough to prevent him from spotting the contours of small humanoid looking embryos of various sizes in them.

„These things..." he gestured vaguely towards the jars in question, „what are they?"

„Research material. They," Paul just shrugged his shoulders indifferently, „turned up the wrong way."

„Why did you let them grow so far? What do you need them for? And why in such large numbers? There must be at least 80 of them around."

„138 to be precise. Hell, Jonah, drop the scandalized acting. You once built an empire running drugs some of which you produced yourself." Musseveni sat down on a tall stool and bent over a flexi. „I need them to check growing rates and malfunctions at different stages. Presently I am trying to let the flash-bots reproduce independently within the single cells, using ribosomes **and **mitochondries as multiplicators. There are problems with the cell-growth, though. And with the integrity of the cell nucleus."

Jonah watched him flabbergasted.

„You're joking, right? You haven't figured out how to reduce the addiction effects and already you're taking it one step further?"

„Why not? What if the addiction was the only negative effect? And what if I find a drug to compensate the addiction effects?"

„ Have you?"

„Not quite there. But I'll figure it out. Right now there are some side effects to the drug."

„Like what?"

„Like increased irritability, loss of self-control. On the other hand, you have the flash enhancing your reflexes, your strength... It's a bit of a _va banque_-game, that way..." Paul Musseveni sounded thorougly unimpressed. „Now," he turned to Jonah, „what do you need for Hunt?"

„Clips – and some unaltered nanobot-injectors and painkillers."

„Help yourself," Paul indicated a panel on his right side. Draeger opened it up, removing a kit of clips. „The nanobot-injectors and painkillers are all altered, though."

„What?" The Seefran turned on his heels and stared wide-eyed at the old man. „What if something happens to one of us?"

„I told you, I already have a new generation of flash-bots. And the sedatives are all mixed up with the counter addiction drug."

„But it isn't tested properly."

„Says who?" the old man asked him.

Again Draeger's eyes narrowed. And then understanding sank in on his face.

„You son of a bitch. You tested it on me."

„And on Yvain," Paul nodded. „What of it? You both reacted well."

„You turn me into a flash addict, you drug me with some stuff altering my hormonal production without telling me, and all you have to say is ‚You reacted well?' I once almost killed Beka on far lesser grounds."

„Are you threatening me?"

Jonah simply stared at him defiantly.

„Bear in mind, dear fellow, that then you had by far larger competences and authority than now. Besides, the effects of both the flash-bots and the drug have disappeared. You seem quite fine, so what is the fuss all about? You didn't even suffer from withdrawal, but I'm not quite sure on that as of yet. You were administered the stuff only once, after all..." Both men glared at each other.

„I don't understand..." Jonah finally asked. „You said that the flash-bots can only be activated voluntarily. Yet I..."

„Yours are different from Beka's. You see, Beka's a pilot. Pilots need to be acting on instinct and be perfectly in control all of the time. Therefore the voluntary triggering. Your bots are meant for fighters. They have to react immediately, with a lot more power and have eventually to endure much longer, without too much thinking about self-preservation. Therefore the reflex triggering." Paul grinned. „It worked just fine with Hunt."

„What? I almost killed him."

„Well, wasn't that what you wanted?"

„No!" Jonah exclaimed. „We need him as a hostage. Besides, had I have wanted him dead, I would have shot him. Why should I beat him to death?"

„It's more fun that way?" Musseveni shrugged.

„Fun? Killing is about preservation, not fun."

„Oh well, I guess this is one of your survivor traits. Suits me..." Paul sounded again most casual. „Now, about those nano-bots and painkillers. You want some?"

„No. I don't know how it will affect him."

„Concerned? How awfully nice of you! I know, you promised Beka. But chances are that they will not affect him differently than they affected you."

„Beka mentioned something about Hunt being genetically altered. Partly heavy-worldler and then there was some stuff the Vedrans tried on him."

„Really?" For the first time Paul Musseveni sounded interested inthe subject of the High Guard captain. „What stuff?"

„I don't know, and since I don't, I'd rather not take any chances. Beka had some nanos and painkillers in her cockpit. She used them, so I guess that they will have to do."

Musseveni laughed softly.

„There was a misunderstanding. Those bots were meant for Beka; so the cockpit injectors were the first to be altered. I guess we'll find out how they work on the good captain after all. I wonder what heavy grav genes and Vedran modifications will add to the test..."

-

(Yes, and: all mistakes are mine.)


	23. Chapter 22

**Gambit **

**Chapter 22**

_What's taking him so long?_ Rebekkah Valentine asked herself as she paced up and down the small vacant place between her bed and the door leading into her quarters in the _Eureka Maru_. She had sprayed plaster on Dylan's forehead three times since Jonah Draeger had left about half an hour ago. Minutes after Draeger had left and they had been alone again, the captain of the _Andromeda _had started to come out of his almost comatose condition. He didn't regain consciousness, but began to move his head from one side of the pillow to the other, violently enough for the plaster covering the gash above his right eye and already heavy with blood to start slipping. Beka had changed it twice, but the more often she changed it, the more blood was seeping from the wound under it. Her attempts to get him to calm down had so far been fruitless. Beka didn't know what frightened her more: his previous state of inertia or the current thrashing. Seeing him almost jerking upright on the bed, she quickly approached him and pushed his shoulders back down on the sheets.

„Dylan, it's alright! You have to calm down! Dylan, please," she urged him, perfectly aware that – even in his present condition – she would have trouble holding him down, if he didn't cooperate. He seemed to respond somewhat. His movements becoming less frantic. For a fraction of a second he became very still and then his eyes, or what was left of them, opened painfully, finally focusing on her with some difficulty.

„Beka..." he tried to speak but only managed to press out a raspy, whispered croak, that irritated his throat and provoked a fit of coughing, leaving him gasping for air. Beka felt her eyes become moist with tears of relief.

„Sshh, it's alright. Here, drink something first..." Carefully, she placed a straw between his parched lips, gingerly holding the glass with water and watching him try to swallow some of the liquid. „Easy, take it easy! Don't go too fast on it." After no more than two draws on the straw he let go of it, his eyelids dropping tiredly. His XO stood up from his bedside and leaned over to a small shelf to the left of it, where she put down the glass. Next to the shelf was a small sink, where she moistened a soft cloth before quickly returning to Dylan's side. She began to cool off the small spots on his face that were neither bruised nor covered with plaster.

„Damn'," he murmured tired.

„What's wrong?" she asked alarmed.

„I probably am dying!"

„Why? Are you in pain? Do you feel like passing out again?" His left eye opened slowly and a small grin twisted the one unbattered corner of his mouth.

„No, but you're being so damn' nice to me... I simply figured that I must be dying." She couldn't prevent herself from returning the grin. „No?" he then asked lowly, a tone of mock reproach in his voice. „Well! You could've freaked me out..."

„That serves you right! You already have freaked **me **out, you know?"

„Really? Why? What happened?"

„You mean, you don't remember?"

He shook his head lightly, grimacing in pain.

„Oh, for the Divine's sake! Stop moving around!" Beka exclaimed annoyed. „I've had enough trouble patching you up already." She quickly filled him in on what had happened with them. He clearly couldn't remember much of what had occurred. Shifting around in the bed Dylan tried to get a better view of himself. It didn't quite work out, but the intense pain he started to feel coming from various parts of his body provided him with more than enough information.

"My clothes... Where are they?"

"I got rid of them. Not that there was much of them left, by the way." She chuckled lightly, seeing the embarrassed look on his face. "Don't worry, tough guy, you haven't got anything that I haven't seen already!"

Dylan closed his eyes, a pained expression crossing his face.

„He got me good," he complained, sounding a bit offended.

„I am so sorry, Dylan!"

„For what? It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have provoked him... **them**. Well, at least we now know..."

„Know what?"

„Whether or not he can break my nose," Dylan said, a slight chuckle in his voice. For a short time they shared silence, the only sound between them the High Guard captain's laboured breathing. Their short conversation had worn him out already.

„Who is flying the _Maru_?" he asked at last.

„We're on auto-pilot. We should be fine until we reach Crimeea, which will be in about two hours. I'll have to leave you then." Beka shuddered at the thought of having him all alone during the almost 48 hours it would take her to get them through the Crimeean System and all the way to Ral Parthia.

_And then what? _Dylan wanted to ask her, but thought better of it. What good would it do to point out the difficulties of their situation. Had he felt stronger, he would have started cursing. He wondered if Beka had come up with a plan.

„Beka, listen," he started, but found his words coming out as a hoarse rasp. She gave him some more water, and he tried anew. "Why don't you refuse?"

She looked at him aghast. "Dylan, we've already covered that. Would you please consider what happened because we merely joked? Who knows what they might do if I refuse..."

"So what are you going to do? Go on flash on my behalf? I forbid you that! Do you understand me? I..."

"Don't be such a pain! And stop hero-ing around... You really are in no position to do that right now." Beka's last remark seemed to silence him. But then he cleared his throat:

"Look at us!" he urged her. Annoyed, Beka averted her eyes from him. "Look at us, I said!" he ordered a bit stronger. "We're outgunned and outnumbered, and judging from the way I feel... I'd say that at least one of us is offering a pretty sorry sight. If this is no position to start ‚hero-ing around', then I must have been sadly misinformed all those years." He stopped to gasp for air.

A thoughtful look in her eyes, his first officer contemplated him silently, a small smile twitching vaguely at the corner of her mouth.

"What?" Dylan groaned lowly.

"I always thought that there are many endearing aspects to your person, Dylan, but if someone were to ask what I really love about you, I'd say it's your almost uncanny ability to make fun of yourself at the most awkward moments."

In spite of being fully aware that it would hurt, he couldn't prevent a lopsided grin from twisting his lips.

"I'm glad there is at least something that you still love about me. Beka, listen to me," he begged. Reaching out for her arm, he continued, "I'm not 'hero-ing around', I just realized that I was wrong in my previous assumption. They will kill me or dismantle the _Maru _regardless of the fact that it might leave them with nothing to blackmail you with... So it might be just as well if we show them right now that they can't blackmail you!" His first officer didn't seem convinced. She watched him struggle to go on with his thoughts and thought of interrupting him. She knew where he was heading and wished for him to stop. But the sight of her commanding officer barely able to pull himself together made her bite her tongue and let him continue.

„Beka, you've already been to Ral Parthia. Is there... Would you tell me what mess we're really in here?"

He had chosen his words carefully, but Beka knew exactly what he meant by them. _Is there a way out of this or are we really cornered?_ That he was even thinking along those lines scared her. It was uncharacteristic for Dylan Hunt to doubt that they will make it. His XO looked at him with troubled, weary eyes.

„We'll be fine, Dylan. I'm sure. There must be a way out of this. We're gonna be just fine!" Her voice lacked conviction and he didn't miss it.

„That bad, eh?" She felt anger rising up inside her.

„What do you want me to say? That we're peachy? We're not. In just two-three hours I'll fly that route again, and sooner or later I'll have to go on flash. And you've been hurt badly and will have to take care of yourself because..." She looked at him with eyes wide. „Frankly, Dylan, when we get to Ral Parthia I won't care much about you - or anything else, for that matter." Beka sounded pained, ashamed, guilty, so much so that he struggled to get up from the bed and reach her. She saw his attempts and quickly moved to prevent him from getting up , but before she could stop him he had almost risen from his bed.

"Beka!" His voice sounded strained, weak, but there was no mistaking his tone for anything else but deadly serious. "I meant what I just told you. I forbid you to fly to Ral Parthia. Not for me, not for the _Maru_, not for anything. If I'm to die, if they dismantle your ship, so be it. You said that the flash-bots have to be activated voluntarily. If you don't go to slipstream, you won't have to do it. And being the Matriarch, they won't touch **you**!"

"Dylan, there might be something for the Commonwealth in here. I haven't figured out what Paul is up to but..."

"No! This isn't a debate. You said yourself that things are pretty screwed up... Whatever Musseveni's up or not up to is something that you can find out otherwise. And if you don't, well then I guess that the CW will learn sooner or later anyway." This was another one of those things that Beka had always admired about Dylan: the way he understood how to switch himself into full captain-mode, no matter what the situation. It was costing him dearly to even keep himself in a sitting position, yet he didn't back down. Still, she had to disagree.

„This is stupid. There is more at risk here than the _Maru_, than the two of us. Paul is breeding this new race, he has access to Vedran technology, he has found a slipstream-route to Ral Parthia. We have to know what this is all about. Don't flatter yourself, Dylan, that I'm only doing this to keep you safe. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how the ride is going to affect you, going to slipstream might kill you just as effectively as me refusing to do so. But if we go, we... **I** might at least find out what this is all about; I could buy us some time and get the news to the CW in advance of them finding out the hard way."

„And the odds of you succeeding are...?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

„That's what I thought. So what's the point of you running all those risks?"

She stared at him in utter disbelief. „The point is in maybe getting us out of here alive. The point is in getting a chance to maybe warn the CW before it's too late. The CW, Dylan, is as much my baby as it is yours. I didn't spent all those years of my life just to stand by and watch Paul step in and play ‚Hephaistos revisited'. History won't be repeating itself, not on my watch! I made a promise once that I would carry on rebuilding and defending this baby of ours, no matter what. And I don't go back on my promises."

He sat there gasping for breath, leaning heavily on his left arm, while he tried cradling his injured right hand in his lap.

"Beka, this is suicide – and you damn' well know it!" Dylan was not a person who considered shouting a means of persuasion, but this once he wished he had the strength to raise his voice and scream at her. "And we both know that if Paul offered you any other way to commit suicide, you would turn him down, no matter what's at stake!"

"What are you implying?"

"I am not 'implying' anything. I'm telling you right to your face that this is just as much about flash as it is about me and the Commonwealth."

Beka stared at him, cold fury in her eyes.

"You bastard, you... self-righteous son of a bitch! Do you really believe that or is this just another one of Captain Hunt's endless supply of dirty tricks?"

"Look me in the eye and tell me this isn't about Beka Valentine finally finding a valid excuse to go on flash, to become exactly like her father, not worthy of affection, not worthy of trust – yet doing it all 'for a noble cause'! Tell me!"

Coming as close to him as possible and lowering herself down until their eyes were on the same level Beka gazed into his face, her own features distorted from the strain of having to keep down the rage she was feeling.

"This isn't about me, this isn't about flash..." she hissed through her teeth, her tone low and dangerous, "it **is **about the CW, and it **is **about you. And yes," she added coldly, "when this is over, you'll owe me even more."

His brain wasn't working properly. He was tired, weak almost to the point of weeping from sheer exhaustion and he was in a great deal of pain; Dylan knew this, but he also knew that he had to come up with something to stop her from risking her life once again to remain faithful to a promise he never would have asked for, had he known then what he knew now: that in promising him what he had practically extorted from her, Rebekkah Valentine had given up her life to live his. It was a lot of pressure in his current condition. As it turned out, it was too much pressure this time. He struggled for an answer, a solution - **any **solution. Had he still been able to think properly, he would have known that what he finally came up with was plainly stupid. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to do so anymore.

"To hell with the CW. To hell with your promise. You won't do it. That's final. And yes, this is an order. Should you go disobey it and should we make it out of here, I swear I'll have you thrown out of the High Guard and from the _Andromeda_..." She looked at him incredulously as his voice finally failed him.

For a moment he sat there, gasping for his breath with Beka standing next to him, struggling for words. But then a muffled cry escaped his lips. Had she not quickly sat down behind him, he would have fallen flat on his back. Instead he fell against her, his head resting on her shoulder and immediately started writhing in agony. She took hold of his shoulders, trying to stabilize him, to keep him from rolling around, but couldn't. His eyes tightly shut, the whole body tensing, while his forehead was pressing hard into the juncture between Beka's neck and shoulder, Dylan seemed to plunge into a paroxysm of pain. She could hear him grinding his teeth, struggling to prevent himself from crying out loud. Under his weight Beka was quite helpless. She couldn't make out what was hurting him so much, nor could she help him in any other way than by trying to hold him in place, waiting for the massive wave to pass or for him to pass out, whichever happed first. Any illusions she still might have treasured concerning his ability to recuperate, vanished into thin air. Had she not been so busy with holding on to him, she probably would have panicked.

Rebekkah Valentine was a tough, sometimes even hard woman. She had seen her fair share of death, blood and slaughter. But whenever something happened to people she cared about, the Eureka Maru's captain just couldn't keep up any kind of professional detachment whatsoever. It drove her out of her mind. When Harper, Rhade, Dylan, one of her pilots, some of the crew or even Rommie, Trance or Doyle – in spite of knowing the three of them to be virtually indestructible – were somehow in less than perfect shape, it simply freaked her out, so much so that she was often unable to show herself considerate or caring after the danger passed. As long as there were others to take action, there was no one as utterly useless on a med-deck as the _Andromeda Ascendant_'s executive officer. When facing those kind of problems alone though, she performed quite well, as long as there was something that she could actually do. Yet, sitting helplessly next to someone driven almost out of his mind from pain didn't qualify as ‚doing something' in Beka Valentine's book.

As a result, she could only cling desperately to Dylan until with one last hoarse cry of pain he finally sagged limply against her. Beka gently lifted his head to look into his face. His face was a grey mask, with two spots of red on his flushed cheeks, his lips white and pressed together, the bruises standing out viciously against his ghostly colour.

„Dylan..." she heard herself almost sobbing his name.

„Don't worry," he tried to reassure her through his still clenched teeth. „I'm good... I am good now," he said drawing in a shuddered, long breath.

It was a lie, of course. He wasn't good. He wasn't even bad. Truth be told, in his present state bad would have been an improvement. Beka was quite aware that he was trying to calm her fears. It didn't work.

„That's rubbish. Where were you hurting?"

„More or less all over. I felt like..." He didn't get to finish. Before he could explain to her what he had felt like another wave of pain hit him, and this time he couldn't fight it off. As soon as he collapsed completely, she found herself practically buried under his weight, unable to lift him enough to get up from the bed. It was thus that Jonah Draeger found them when he got back: Dylan out cold again and Beka utterly helpless, tears streaming down her face and sobbing almost hysterically.

„Beka!" He quickly approached them, lifting Dylan carefully and holding him to let the woman get up. Beka didn't move. „Beka!" Jonah urged her again, more sharply and was pleased to see her react, her eyes finally focusing on him. She quickly stood up, frantically brushing away the tears from her face. With a relieved sigh Draeger eased the unconscious man back on the mattress and turned towards the pilot, taking her in his arms. At first her body stiffened, but then he felt her shoulders relaxing as she sagged against him, her arms reaching around him and clinging to his back. He hold her for a minute, gently stroking her hair.

„Beka, what happened here?"

She straightened herself and looked up to him. Her eyes were red and held a lost look in their depths.

„He woke up. We just talked. He seemed fine." She hesitated. „Well, not fine," she then corrected herself, „but... you know, not too bad. And then he tried to sit up and..." She briefly closed her eyes, as if wanting to shut the image out. „He was in awful pain. It came out of nowhere, all of a sudden. I tried to help him, but got trapped beneath him." She sighed and then her eyes returned to Jonah's face, looking there for an answer. „What's wrong with him? It can't just be the beating he took!" Draeger shrugged.

„I don't know. We'll find out." _I hope_, he thought to himself, wisely refraining from speaking his thoughts aloud. „Right now we should concentrate on getting the gashes fixed up."

Beka nodded quietly. Dylan's writhing had made the two cuts bleed even more than previously, thoroughly drenching the bandages and leaving bright spots of a now quickly darkening red all over the bed. She went over to the sink, quickly catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror over it: her throat and right jaw were also smeared with drying blood from Dylan's forehead,, her face above the dried blood looking ghostly white and gaunt. She took out a towel and cleaned herself mechanically, then reached for another drawer inserted in the bulkhead next to her, and pulled some fresh blankets out of it.

By the time she turned her attention back to the men, Jonah had already fixed three tiny clips above the High Guard captain's brow and was just finishing the last one of the other eight on his long thigh. The wound clamps consisted of a highly elastic, almost transparent material; they firmly closed the cuts, keeping the suture sterile as long as needed and dissolving after the regenerating process was completed. Jonah contemplated his work after he was done and nodded with satisfaction.

„That should do," he murmured. „The one cut on the thigh will probably not even leave a scar. The other though..." Beka looked at him surprised.

„I don't think that he'll mind a scar above his brow!" She sounded almost amused. „As long as he keeps his eye..." Jonah's head came up. He looked at her, puzzled.

„His eye was never in danger..."

„I know, I know. Just kidding!" Beka tried to focus. Whenever something started to get to her, she always went for irony. And it never failed to make others wonder. She approached the bed. „You are quite skillful with this," she gestured towards Dylan. The Seefran nodded lightly.

„When I was young on Seefra, I was a... physician."

„You're joking! What do you mean - physician? More likely a healer, considering the technology standards you had back then..."

He shrugged, his eyes darkening in anger, but his voice remained under control.

„A healer then! Suit yourself! However, I found out that you can make more selling and shipping drugs than by applying them on others. So..."

„So you changed trades."

„Well, I changed back, after our... encounter! For almost six months though I was my only patient. And Paul helped me a lot."

Beka watched him thoughtfully.

„I see," she replied quietly. „You seem really gifted. Thank you. For him..." she gestured towards the bed where Dylan laid, anew eerily still and relaxed. „Would you..." She cleared her throat. „Would you help me with him while I change these?" she then asked, showing him the fresh blankets.

„I will. And you're welcome." They proceeded in silence. It took them only a couple of minutes, Beka diligently changing the sheets while Jonah was gently shifting Dylan around. Afterwards he lifted the blood smeared blankets from deck and stood up.

„I'll put these away. I suggest you try and get some rest. I would advise you to lay down in a bunk in the crew's quarters, but I suspect that you won't leave him..."

She shook her head.

„That's what I thought. Well then – the bed is broad enough for the two of you. But I guess you know that." He almost smirked at that, but then thought better of it. .Jonah saw a flicker in Beka's eyes and hurried to offer an apology:

„No! I didn't mean it like that..." Relieved, he saw that the woman accepted it without further comment. He turned to leave.

„Jonah..."

„Yes?" He hesitated, hoping against all probability that she'd ask him to stay.

„Have you brought any painkillers with you? And did you find any unaltered nanobot-injectors?" He shook his head.

„No, there were none. I will try to make some, but... the supplies are rather thin and the _Maru_'s medical capacities..." He didn't finish.

„I see," Beka replied, sounding out of hope. „Will he... Can he make it on his own? Even later on, in slipstream?"

„Without the bots? Probably. Without sedatives? I really do not know. You see, this pain attack, the fever... I'm not sure about it." As an explanation that was close enough to the truth.

He threw her one last glance. She was standing tall slightly in front of Dylan, her head up high, arms crossed over her chest, the blonde mane falling wildly down her shoulders, her eyes revealing nothing of what was going on behind them. A lioness defending a fallen one of her pride.

_I better tell her now_, he thought disheartened. But he didn't dare.


	24. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23 **

They were making good time. With Rhade at the helm of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ as often as possible the jumps were smooth, easy going affairs, even though the short cuts he took were not as numerous as Beka would have found. The security systems, weaponry, and life support were checked by _Andromeda_, checked again and then checked some more, while Rommie was simultaneously drilling the crew to make them as efficient as possible in the short time available to her.

After having been confined to their quarters for the first day of the journey, Rafe and Tabea were allowed to move freely aboard _Andromeda_, who was monitoring them closely, but not obsessively so. The two of them were heading for an early breakfast in the mess, when Rafe suddenly reconsidered. The redhead at his side threw him a puzzled look as he suddenly stopped and pulled his hand back from under her arm.

„What's wrong?"

„Nothing. I just... I suddenly remembered something I wanted to check." Rafe's voice was distant and thoughtful, his brown eyes showing no trace of emotion whatsoever. It was a common misconception that dark eyes were always pools of warmth. Sometimes they were just pools of darkness, nothing more; deep, black obsidian lakes of unknown depth. Tabea shuddered lightly, but then she pushed her feelings aside. He couldn't possibly suspect her.

„Well, then I'll just go on to the mess."

He nodded lightly, a faint smile adorning his lips as he saw her walk around the corner. After one more moment, Raphael Valentine turned around and headed back into the direction they had come from.

-

Tabea walked on for two more decks, but then stopped in front of a monitor inserted in the bulkhead.

„Andromeda, show me the shortest way to my quarters, please," she asked in a melodious voice. A blue flicker passed on the screen before a simple map showing her location and tracing a route through the _Andromeda_'s decks appeared on the display.

„Thank you," the former Nietzschean slave acknowledged. „Now could you show me please the exact location of Raphael Valentine."

The map disappeared and _Andromeda_'s image showed up on the monitor instead.

„Information on crew members and guests aboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, including the exact whereabouts during their stay, is reserved exclusively to officers of the senior staff," the ship politely informed her.

„I see," Tabea replied to this. She shrugged her shoulders. „Never mind. I think I'll go back to my quarters and postpone breakfast until later on."

„As you wish," _Andromeda_ responded coldly and flickered out of existence, the blue command panel reappearing again.

Tabea sighed and turned on her heels. Moving as fast as possible without actually running, she made her way along the route previously indicated reaching her quarters' doors within minutes. She keyed her access codes and opened the door. The rooms behind the doors were dark, silent and as empty as she had left them. A little intrigued the young woman swept through the spacious rooms and the adjacent PHF – the personal hygiene facility, as Rommie had called it, when she had showed her to the guest quarters. There was nothing to be found. No trace that anyone had searched them. A thoughtful look on her face, her lower lip tightly pulled between her teeth, Tabea left heading once more for the mess.

-

He was standing in front of the first officer's quarters, his brows frowning as he tried yet another code that failed to open the doors.

„Mr Valentine!" The soft, cold voice startled him just as much as the _Andromeda_'s hologram flickering right next to him into existence. „May I be of assistance?"

„Ah, yes, _Andromeda_... Yeah, you may actually..." he stammered a bit confused under the mildly interested gaze of the holographic image. „I need to enter Beka's quarters."

„I have already figured that out. May I ask why?" Her even tone didn't change either in softness nor coolness.

„Beka's private files," Rafe stated a little abruptly. „I need to have a look at them." Other than her eyebrows going up a little higher the interested, yet not overly curious expression on the beautiful face didn't change.

„Well, I need to find out about Jonah Draeger. She wanted to tell me, but didn't have the time. Maybe I find something about him in her personal files, something that could help us."

„I see. Well, you may have a point there, but then I think I'll check the files myself."

„I'm her brother!" Raphael Valentine sounded a bit offended.

„And I am her ship!" Rommie told him, her lips pressed together in an apologetic smile. „While personal files in the hands of relatives can become a source of... eventual disagreements," she was obviously having trouble not to smirk at him as she told him that, „I can be trusted with them to the end. I do have some experience in safeguarding my crew members' personal logs."

Beka's brother couldn't suppress a deep sigh.

„There might be something in it that I recognize, that you might miss. Something explaining to me..." His voice trailed off. He averted his eyes from her for an instant. „Sometimes," he then stated slowly, „I don't even think I know her at all any more." He shook his head at his own musings. „Your captain... he was telling me things about Beka, and I had no idea what he was talking about."

Rommie contemplated him thoughtfully, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

„They've been captaining this ship together for so long now, they've become a bit like an old couple," she offered what she hoped to be some comfort. „An... odd old couple maybe, but a couple. They have issues with each other dating back to Seefra and even prior to that. I wasn't around much on Seefra, but... let's just say they went through a lot together." The hologram almost sighed. „Very well," she said, „let's take a look together at those files. My avatar is on her way to join you."

"Thank you," Rafe answered quietly. "But there is something that I have to do first. Can you put me through to your captain, please?"

"Certainly," _Andromeda_ said a bit surprised. "Do you also want me to engage privacy mode?"

"No, I think that this is something that you should know as well."

An instant later Andromeda's image was replaced with Harper's.

"Rafe. How are you? Do you want to know the ETA for the Illion system?"

"I wouldn't have troubled the captain for that," Beka's brother replied. "Imagine what Andromeda would have done to to me, had I been bothering you with such trivialities..."

Harper eyed him suspiciously, but there was no trace of irony to be found on Raphael Valentine's face.

"Don't push it, Rafe," he warned him, just in case.

The older man shook his head.

"No, seriously, Harper. There is something I wanted to tell you. Tabea..."

"Ah, yes - beautiful Tabea!" _Andromeda_'s acting captain interrupted, his tone sounding strangely knowing. "A bit too beautiful, don't you think?"

"Precisely." Beka's brother curled up his nose a little, suddenly the spitting image of his sister. "From the very start she has been a trifle too perfect in just about every way one could imagine. Not quite the average slave girl..."

"How skilled in pleasing you was she?"

"Not skilled enough," Rafe warned him. "In fact her amount of perfection was that much troubling that I always refrained from letting her too close to me. She served me - in a slightly offended manner, mind you - and never left my side until I was asleep. I even think she stuck around even after I went to bed..."

Harper chuckled lightly.

"You never took advantage of her, I presume?"

"Are you joking?" Valentine asked him, his eyes opened wide. "Have you seen her muscles? However: after I left to follow Dylan's orders, she alerted the guards. They came searching for me - and there was a touching scene, with one of them kicking and screaming at her... I checked her afterwards: she didn't even have a bruise, not a scratch."

"A slave girl kicked by a Nietzschean - and not a bruise..." Harper's teeth were nibbling at his lower lip. "A bit clumsy, don't you think?"

"But good enough to fool a worthless, stupid kludge, right?"

"Why is she here?"

"I didn't want a new alert. Besides: she wanted to come with me," Rafe explained meaningful.

"What for?"

"Beats me..."

"All right. Thanks for telling me that. Where is she now?"

"I have no idea. Me and Rommie, we'd like to search Beka's files for information..." he hesitated a bit, then added: "...with your permission, of course. I didn't want Tabea around for that."

"Okay, permission granted," Harper nodded, "I'll have Rhade engage in a little _tête-à-tête_ with Miss Gorgeous..."

"As long as he doesn't lose his head over it," Rafe said cautiously.

"Don't worry. Our resident Nietzschean is immune to perfection. He even ignores mine..."

-

„Good morning! Mind if I join you?"

The deep, polite voice made Tabea look up. She found herself looking straight into the dark face of Commander Telemachus Rhade, who was smiling down at her in his quiet, somewhat distant manner. The superb red-head nodded, silently indicating the chair on the other side of the table. She was seated in a remote corner of the officer's mess, a tray with oatmeal, milk and juice before her.

„That's a frugal breakfast," the Nietzschean remarked, indicating the food she was nibbling at.

„I'm not much of an eater," she replied, her green eyes scrutinizing him coldly.

„I'm pleased to hear that at least some Drago-Katzov are treating their slaves properly."

She raised her eyebrows, obviously not quite understanding what he was hinting at. Rhade cocked his head to a side and observed her thoughtfully.

„Our captain, Seamus Harper. He grew up on Earth. From what he told me, the Dragans there took almost pride in starving the Terran population, even if it meant hurting their own interests by decimating their slaves."

„It's not like that on Myrmidon," she told him in a haughty tone, „not like that at all. They are severe, but they aren't cruel or stupid."

Rhade shook his head in slight mockery.

„And our captain says that Nietzscheans aren't able to learn from past mistakes... I'm glad you prove him wrong."

Tabea watched him carefully. She wondered where he was going with this train of thought and decided to play along with him and just find out what it was that he wanted from her.

„Although I was a slave, I never really feared them . They were more often than not considerate and caring. For all their fighting skills, they are philosophers, poets, they love their children dearly and pride themselves in their continuous strive for perfection."

„You don't say!" he replied, sounding a bit amused. His dark eyes revealed nothing of what was going on behind them, wandered over her regal head, following down the masses of rich red curls, that fell down to her waist. She had a perfect silhouette, firm shoulders, generous breasts, soft hips and long, yet obviously well muscled legs that carried her around with almost feline grace. Rhade nodded appreciatively.

„I'm pleased to hear you praise the Drago-Khatzov. I always have been troubled by Nietzscheans not living up to their potential."

„So I suppose you take pride in your Nietzschean descent?"

„Of course," he answered freely.

„Then what are you doing serving under a human from Earth?"

„Now that is a strange question coming from a slave girl."

Her eyes lit up in a green flash, but then her long dark lashes came down and covered them; had Rhade not been Nietzschean he might have missed the spark. Being one however, he noticed and took a quick sip from his tea, his cup hiding away his face from his interlocutor's gaze.

„ Just because I was a slave, doesn't mean that I cannot understand their way of thinking. In fact when I lived among them it was a matter of life and death to understand them properly,."

The Nietzschean concealed a smile at her awkward choice of words. ‚Among them' she had said, not ‚under them'. _How strange_, the Nietzschean thought amazed, they went through all this trouble, _but didn't think of nature manifesting itself in each and every one of us, even in spite of our will.  
_  
„I am a subject of the Commonwealth. There were a few of us remaining loyal to the CW after the Fall. We never had a problem with serving with or under humans."

„But I thought that you were now Terrazed's governor." _At least she's done her homework_, he thought ironically.

„I am. But Beka and Dylan are my friends. They're missing. It's only natural that I came to help out."

„I see." She stood up, removing the remnants of her breakfast from the table. „I'm sure you'll find them." With a small nod, she left him sitting at the table and withdrew towards the doors.

Rhade remained seated and drank his tea patiently. Minutes after Tabea had disappeared, the doors to the officers' mess slid open and strode Harper in wearing a High Guard jacket over his usual less than regular attire. He walked over to Rhade and sat down gazing at him expectantly.

„Well?" he asked impatiently.

„Well," Rhade responded, „you can take the bone blades off the Nietzschean, but taking the Nietzschean off the Nietzschean is an entirely different matter altogether."

„Why is she here?"

„Beats me!" Rhade admitted. „For the moment." he quickly added. „But the way I see it, she has the typical Dragan arrogance. She thinks she has us fooled. Smart as she may be, sooner or later Tabea will drop her guard and make her move. And with time running out on her as much as it is for us, I expect sooner will be more likely than later." (Why is Rhade assuming that the clock is ticking for Tabea? She could simply be insurance to ensure that time runs out for the Andromeda)

Harper looked at him lost in his own thoughts. without really seeming to notice his table mate. „Tell me, what do you know about Tyr Anasazi?" he asked.

Rhade couldn't suppress a laughter upon hearing Harper's annoyed tone. „More than I ever wanted."

„But you wouldn't know, by chance, what Dylan knows, would you?" Harper asked anxiously.

A curious gleam appeared in Rhade's eyes. „What does Dylan know?" he asked, his tone even, yet cautious.

Harper threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. „That's just it. I don't know! Dylan and Tyr had some business together, that remained unfinished. It's buried in his personal log files, and no one's allowed access to them until four weeks after the captain has been declared dead or MIA."

Rhade puffed out his cheeks. „I see. And since Beka and Dylan haven't been declared..."

„Exactly," Harper cut in, running a hand through his unruly hair.

„Does Beka know?"

Again, Harper grunted annoyed. „Probably. I wonder if there is anything that Beka doesn't know when it comes to Tyr... or Dylan, for that matter."

Rhade looked at his captain with a pensive look on his face. „So," he stated slowly, „do you think you could...?" His voice trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

„Do you think I should?" Harper shot back at him.

„Is this the High Guard officer asking the governor? The captain asking his first officer?"

„How about Harper asking Rhade?"

The Nietzschean nodded slightly.„I think you must!"

Harper rose to his feet and clasped the bigger man on his shoulder. „Come on, then. Let's do it!"

„Do what?" Rhade asked surprised.

„ Break in into Dylan's personal log files. What did you think?"

„You'll really do it?" his XO gasped at him.

„Would I ever ignore an advice from my favorite Nietzschean?"

„You? Never," the ‚favorite Nietzschean' grinned, and both men left the mess smiling.


	25. Chapter 24

Thank you all for the reviews. And Mizor, thank you so much for your help!

**Chapter 24**

Rommie was looking at Rafe in a somewhat helpless manner. She was used to providing comfort to her various crew members, but normally the newer ones required more advice and help with their various tasks, while her senior staff was so familiar to her that comforting them was more or less like comforting herself. Raphael Valentine though was basically a stranger.

Granted, he was Beka's brother and had been visiting aboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_ a few of times during the past years, but other than some playful, flirtatious exchanges there hadn't been communication between Beka's somewhat shady elder sibling and the _Andromeda_'s avatar. Seeing him sitting in Beka's living room with tears running down his cheeks, as he watched his sister's personal log files from the _Maru_ prior to her finding the _Andromeda Ascendant_ in the Seefra System, left Rommie at a loss.

„It was a long time ago," she offered clumsily.

Raphael Valentine wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands and turned off the screen.

„She was so lonely, so defeated... I never would have thought I would see her like that," the man stated in a quiet voice, pulling himself together.

„She was dying, wasn't she?" he asked, turning a strained face towards the beautiful avatar.

Rommie shrugged her shoulders.

„She was, but it didn't happen. She found me, came aboard, was eventually found by Jonah Draeger and then ultimately by Dylan and Rhade."

„Still, when she recorded this, she thought she was dying." He stood up and began pacing around Beka's quarters. „And her last thoughts were of your captain."

A thoughtful gleam crept into Rommie's eyes.

„Like I said, she was starving, delirious from thirst... and the two of them had been through a lot together," the avatar replied. „Aside from a love relation, I don't think that there is a closer bond than that between a captain and his first officer." _Or his ship_, she thought, but refrained from saying it out loud.

„And yet... I'm her brother!" There was an indignant undertone in Rafe's voice.

Rommie frowned. „What do you mean?" she asked.

„I mean there she is, dying and leaving last messages to posterity. And all she thinks about is Dylan... She didn't even mention me!" There was very little physical resemblance between Beka and her brother, but as he stopped pacing and turned around to face the android, legs wide apart, fists firmly placed on his hips, his face bearing an accusing pout, he was suddenly his sister's spitting image.

Relieved, the avatar couldn't refrain from smiling. „You sound jealous."

Surprised, Rafe started to protest, but the words died on his lips. It was true, he was jealous, jealous of what his sister had accomplished, of the friends she had found, of the fact that quite obviously all the people now gathered around her were more of a family to her than he had ever been. Jealous too because he could have had that once – and because he doubted that there was a turning back from the road Beka's and his relationship had taken.

As an expression of understanding slowly formed on his face, Rommie couldn't help from being sorry for him. Granted, he was a scoundrel and a troublemaker, and his brief encounters with his sister – and with the rest of the _Andromeda_'s crew, for that matter – hadn't always resulted in moments of pure joy, but he was Beka's big brother and she could understand that, for all their quarrels and disagreements, this was one position in his life he didn't want to see usurped.

Rommie gently placed a hand on his upper arm.

„You know," she stated carefully, „Beka's last encounter with Dylan prior to this recording was... somewhat exciting. The last she had seen him he was piloting a slipfighter, running a gauntlet through a swarm of Magog ships and heading into some unknown universe. She thought him dead – she thought all of us dead, as a matter of fact. You were somewhere behind, safe and sound and far away from danger. And since she didn't know where she actually was, she might have even thought that there was a way back to you. But us... she thought us lost to her, once and for good, you know."

Rafe nodded in agreement, clearly understanding what Rommie was trying to tell him. Still, he had to ask:

„Your captain... She looks up to him, doesn't she?"

To his puzzlement Rommie gave a small chuckle.

„What?" he inquired a bit surprised. „What's so funny?"

„Nothing," the android admitted. „Nothing at first sight. But you see, the answer to your question depends on whom you're asking."

As Rafe still didn't seem to get it, Rommie sighed and continued:  
„I would bet that if you were to ask Beka if she looked up to Dylan, she'd jump down your throat, and then she would admit that yes, she actually is – sort of – looking up to him. If you asked Dylan the same question however, he would probably tell you that she more often than not thinks him a bit stupid, and that she expects **him** to look up to **her**."

Seeing his eyes narrowing, the android hurriedly added, „Don't get me wrong, I don't think that they're struggling for power..."

Rafe merely smiled. „Don't worry! I think I understand now."

It clearly was Rommie's turn to seem a bit surprised. „You do?" she asked.

„Oh yes, you see, Beka's always been a bit her mother's daughter. I don't think that she would question your captain's leadership, unless..." He hesitated, but then flashed a disarming smile to Rommie and went on: „...unless of course he's leading into a direction Beka doesn't approve of. If he does, however, she'll do everything she can to bully him – all of you – into taking the course she wants. And if this doesn't work... she'll walk out on you," he concluded in a somewhat bitter tone.

Rommie nodded thoughtfully.„She did it once. But she came back... Just before we got stranded on Seefra."

„Yes," Rafe agreed, „it figures. She is also Daddy's girl. Our father was not quite the hero she wanted him to be. But he was a decent guy before... before... you know..." His voice faded out on an embarrassed note. He awkwardly shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat. "Anyway, unlike me, he wasn't a quitter. And neither is Beka."

"No, you're right." A companionable silence settled between the two of the for a few moments then Rommie decided to continue their task. "Rafe, we need to find out more about Jonah Draeger. Are you alright now? Can we... Shall we continue with the log files?"

The man seemed to shrug off whatever was still on his mind. "You're right. Of course, let's continue."

They both sat down and began viewing Bekas logs..

-

Harper and Rhade entered the captain's office at a swift pace. The Nietzschean threw a look around as he stepped inside.

"Nothing changed, eh?" he asked in a low voice.

Harper merely nodded in a distracted way. "_Andromeda_, privacy mode. Take a seat," he said, indicating the chair placed before the captain's desk as he he threw himself into the chair behind the desk, swirling around in his chair so that he faced the bulkhead. He lightly tapped several spots on the bulkhead that looked in no way different than the rest of it. Almost immediately a pair of previously invisible drawers slid silently out. Plunging his hands into one of them, he extracted a huge amount of flexis and threw them onto the desk behind him before proceeding likewise with the other drawer.

Rhade watched him intensely with slightly lifted eyebrows.

"What are those?"

"Hints," the small man replied, his boots kicking the drawers sliding them back into the bulkhead.

"Hints of what?"

"Whatever," Harper replied curtly. "There's no way I can get into the classified log-files if I don't find the 'magic words' of passage."

"And you think Dylan kept them on flexis?"

"Keeps them, Rhade, he keeps them," he replied in a harsh tone, regretting his annoyance when he saw the Nietzschean's eyes growing wide and distant. "The flexis all have but inconspicuous texts – but there are messages encrypted therein."

"That's a new one!"

Harper laughed humorlessly as he began separating the flexis into two large heaps, shoving one of them over to Rhade's side.

"Actually no, it's an old trick, probably one of the oldest. That's what's so good about it... Everybody would be searching _Andromeda_'s data and find out that they can't get past the security codes. And then they would be searching the available data codes, that simply aren't there but here, written down and hidden. The old fashioned way."

Rhade began looking through the texts he had.

"Harper, what exactly are we looking for?"

"Eye catchers. Something in those texts that might sound familiar in some way or the other. Phrases sounding typical of Dylan, sentences reminding you of our past... 'adventures', something that you think might have some connection to Dylan's, Beka's, anyone of ours memories and experiences."

"Great," Rhade murmured annoyed. "That could take days. Why don't we let _Andromeda_ check them?"

"Because, almighty bonehead," Harper answered sharply, "then she would have access to the codes that are hidden...?"

Rhade sighed. "Yes, right! I guess, it's never easy."

"See? Now that's the spirit. This is precisely the sort of thing we're looking for in here."

A couple of hours later they had come up with about five flexis that seemed to be a bit of help.

"What do you have?" asked Rhade.

"A speech by Sani nax Rifati. About Commonwealth values. There's a phrase in there I recognize: 'Dreams don't die.'"

"But I thought we were supposed to look for connections with the Nietzscheans, also."

"There is one. The next sentence in Rifati's speech was: 'Not even for the Nietzscheans.' When Dylan quoted him he left that bit aside."

"Anything else?"

"An essay on old Earth religions..."

"Harper, I realize that Earth for you is special, but shouldn't we be..."

"It is an essay about some sectarians worshipping a god named Ahuramazda," Harper interrupted.

Rhade's eyes went wide and he slowly nodded. "I see. Does is mention 'Thus spake Zarathustra'?"

"It does. Do you have more?"

The Nietzschean threw Harper the three flexis he was holding. The engineer quickly went through them.

"'Famous quotes of Cardinal Richelieu'?" he asked. "Who the hell was he?"

"I have no idea," Rhade admitted freely. "But there is one where he says: 'May God keep me safe from my friends, my foes I can take care of ."

Harper smiled ironically.

"Yes," he then agreed, "how very appropriate in Dylan's case." It wasn't lost on him that there was a frown on Telemachus Rhade's brow. "No offense, Rhade, but..."

"I know, Harper," the Nietzschean cut him off.

The other two Harper simply dismissed. "'The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire'! No, that one I know; codes for the backup file of Rommie's first mission against the Magog worldship. And the Odyssey, that would be the map of our failed trip to Tarn Vedra..."

There still were many other flexis left that they hadn't been still able to see through. But they decided to first check out those that they had found already. Should they prove inconclusive they still could have a look at the rest. Opening up a new drawer in the panel behind him Harper placed the flexis they hadn't checked out back, after safely returning the other ones back to their original places.

"Now what?"

"Now we find the codes encrypted in those flexis."

"How do we do that?" Harper smiled genuinely amused.

"The originals in Vedran, German, French," he announced determinedly, throwing down the flexis one after one on the desk right in front of him.

"What?" Rhade stared at him incredulously. "Those are extinct languages no one even remembers let alone speaks anymore."

Harper gave the larger man a grin he knew would annoy him."No Nietzschean, you mean. You know, we simple guys from good old backward Earth, we still have some skills and an enormous amount of useless information, that from time to time proves to come in handy."

"You? You speak German and French?... And Vedran?"

Harper nodded, looking pleased with himself. "Magog and Than and Fars... and..."

"I get the picture, thank you. And you can all this because you are from Terra."

"Nooo," Harper admitted hesitating a bit, "mostly because I happen to be a genius..." he shrugged somewhat embarrassed, "and had this Perseid download a lot of data into my brain that I had eventually to get rid of; however I did keep..."

Rhade lifted a hand up in mock defense.

"All right, all right. I know: you're a super genius and I'm but a bone head. Okay. So, super genius, proceed with the decoding."

He sat still, silently watching Harper work his way through the quotes they had singled out. It was a boring way to pass time and his mind drifted of to memories of the past.

_He was carefully trying to find his way through the debris that had turned the corridors leading to the Vedran chambers into dangerous, rubble strewn narrow passages which he expected to come down upon him any minute. Cursing his stupid High Guard code of honor that had become as natural to him as his Nietzschean survival instincts, and collided with them more often than not, Rhade was softly swearing under his breath while throwing chunks of rock out of his way. Dammit, it had taken him more time to get down here than he had expected. And he was on his own. Beka, who had been quite close to the planet, and having the _Maru _was in a better position get Dylan out, had suddenly decided to go into hiding with her newest lover. Nothing had changed, after all._

_It hadn't mattered, in the end. Rhade had been able to find and get the captain out of the Vedran chambers and they had made it back to the _Andromeda_. Dylan was in high spirits, thinking that by now getting the _Andromeda _back to full power was a sure bet. In spite of his eagerness to see this long awaited 'miracle' finally happening, he refused however to go on with it in Beka's absence. For the past 45 minutes they had tried in vain to hail her, until Rommie had suggested that maybe she was choosing not to respond. Still, Dylan left them waiting._

_"Captain, may I have a word with you in private?" Lifting his eyebrows and smiling a little bit surprised Dylan turned to face Rhade._

"'Captain'? What's the matter? Afraid that I might leave you here if you don't start showing a little more respect?" His eyes clearly told him that he was just joking despite the formality in his tone of voice. Nodding slightly and indicating the doors he continued: "Private word? Why not?"

_Once the doors to Command had closed, Rhade felt no reason to hold back any longer._

"Dylan, she has obviously done it again. How much longer do you plan to waste your time and mine waiting for her?"

"Done it again?" He didn't even pretend to not understand. "Rhade, she never ever 'did it': she saved all our asses – yours too – by luring Tyr into our trap. And Jonah... she had thought us all dead..."

_"And decided to sell the _Andromeda _to the highest bidder," the Nietzschean said angrily._

_"It was either that or dying. Rhade, Beka has never let her private life interfere with this crew's and ship's interests."_

_"Captain, I have read all the Andromeda's log files." At Dylan's inquisitive look he continued: "There was this business also with Abel Ladrone – and Leydon... what's-his-name... and..."_

"Rhade, leave it! We don't go without Beka." Annoyed, the High Guard captain turned on his heel and began to walk away.  
  
_"Dylan..."_

_"Damnmit man, it's final. This isn't a debate. We find out why the hell Beka isn't responding, get her butt back here and then – and **only **then – will we attempt to find our way out of Seefra. Besides: not even at full power is this gonna be easy. No offense, Rhade, but this is one slipstream voyage I'd rather not do with you – or me – at the helm."  
_


	26. Chapter 25

Thank you very much to all of you reviewing and reading this.

_Most of all, my heartfelt thanks to Mizor for putting so much work into this story and helping out constantly._**  
**

**Chapter 25**

"'Dreams don't die.'" The acting captain's voice shook Rhade out of his day dreams. "What dreams? Rhade, what is it Nietzscheans dream about?"

"The usual," the governor said, "many healthy children, being and staying Alpha, unifying the prides..."

Harper laughed.

"I don't think that it's this what Tabea is searching for here. We still have the bones of Drago, yet somehow I don't think that this is all about..."

"No," Rhade interrupted, "besides: Tyr is dead and with him gone the claim of being the reincarnation of Drago Musseveni. The bones are safe with us as long as there's no evidence of someone else pretending..." He broke off in mid sentence as he saw the look of total surprise on Harper's face. "What?"

"You mean, you didn't know?" the engineer asked, sounding more than a little off balance.

"Know what?"

"It wasn't Tyr. It was about Tyr's son. Somewhere out there," he waved his hand in an all encompassing gesture, " is his child, Tamerlane, out of Freya by Tyr Anasazi, last of both Kodiak and the Orca-prides. And HE is the reincarnation of Drago Musseveni."

Rhade looked dumbfounded. "No, I didn't know." His eyes got a distant, stand-offish gaze. "Then it might be well about the bones."

Harper shook his head. "I doubt it. I don't think the Dragans have the child. Nor does that explain the part Jonah Draeger is playing in this."

"So?"

"So, let's go take a look!"

"You mean you have the codes?"

Harper stood up and walked around the desk, urging Rhade to get up as well.

"There is an item locked in storage room 74-80, deck 18. I had almost forgotten all about it. And yes, I have the codes. Come on!"

Both men left the office, Harper almost beaming, while Rhade seemed to be sulking a little.

"Are you going to tell me?" he asked while they were climbing down towards deck 18.

"A children's riddle, Rhade: dreams that don't die, the idea of the Übermenschen standing above all others... and this cardinal-stuff, basically stating that one should keep his enemies closer than one's friends. Now how does one do that?"

"Enlighten me!" the Nietzschean replied, Harper's somewhat patronizing tone not was doing nothing to improve his mood.

"How does one rise above others?"

"By being better, stronger, faster."

"How does one become faster, better, stronger?"

"By improving: genetically... Harper, what's your point?"

The engineer sighed loudly. _Nietzscheans, _he thought. "Yes Rhade, genetic enhancement is just peachy... But Draeger is mainly a businessman – and one can't really sell genetic improvement. Only technology that might lead to it."

"So you think they're after some technology ensuring genetic progress..."

"No! I think they're after technology. Period."

" What kind of technology?" The Nietzschean sounded almost exasperated now.

"One that could help you take care of your enemies... Now put your facts together: you need technology that would be a bestseller and prove that Nietzscheans are indeed superior and able to react faster against their enemies than everybody else... And they wanted Beka, who is..."

"The Matriarch," Rhade interrupted.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" Harper sounded just as annoyed as Rhade. "Could you just for a second stop thinking Nietzschean and forget about everything related to procreation? She's not just the Matriarch. She is also the best damn' pilot in three galaxies."

Rhade's eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the little frame walking beside him.

"Slipstream technology?" He almost snarled at Harper. "The slipstream scout mapping over 10 billion routes? Harper, that's a legend. You don't believe in that!"

"A legend, eh? One like the Route of Ages, maybe? Or like the High Guard captain frozen in time and coming to restore the Commonwealth? I tell you what: Beka, Dylan and Tyr, well... they have found that legend and according to Dylan's data it's now locked safely away in storage room 74-80. It's been there for years."

A few steps further down the corridor Harper realized that the Nietzschean was no longer by his side. He stopped and turned around to see the dark man standing rigid in the middle of the corridor, brooding and biting his lower lip.

"Rhade, you coming?" There was no answer. "Rhade?" he urged anew.

"Do you realize," the governor stated slowly, visibly struggling to keep his emotions in check, "that this kind of technology could bring both economic and military power to the Drago-Khatzov far beyond anything we could come up with?"

"Of course!"

"Then pray, do tell me Harper, why – if you already had this technology – didn't you start to use it, study it, make it work... for us? For the CW?"

"Because after Tyr left Dylan thought that with Magog, collectors, Dragans, Pyrians and so many worthy... enemies we should better put it to rest; see, we have Beka..."

"It's been one year, Harper..."

"Yeah, one year in which to build up the Commonwealth's forces, reshape the fleet, recruit members... Rhade, we kept busy! It's not as if things weren't done."

Rhade stroked one hand through his hair, looking angrier than Harper could recall having seen him in a long, long time.

"There is one minor difference between me, you and Dylan," he said, biting each words out. "While you are a genius and Dylan is a hero, me – I keep it simple, soldiering on and on, not for a major break through in some unheard of science field, not for a grand design to shape the universe. I struggle to protect those who can't protect themselves, our homes, friends, families, our way of life. And I know that sometimes one needs an advantage, a lead that simply gives one a better fighting chance. While you and Dylan have kept this a secret from all of us, the Dragans have still somehow heard of it. And it is quite obvious that they worked on the assumption that they would be able to use it someday. And now, as we still don't have insight in this technology the advantage is more likely to be on their side." He breathed deeply in, his eyes piercing through Harper. "Congratulations, Captain, it may well be that your and your hero's high flying ideals have created a new danger that could match the Abyss."

Under his unsympathetic glare Harper was almost cringing but then he straightened himself.  
"Okay, you're right. Maybe it was a mistake not to push for it. I don't know, but right now, we're losing precious time standing here and arguing. Come on, Rhade, get going. We can sort this out later." Both men's eyes met and locked unwaveringly until Rhade relented.

"Very well, but while we're at it ask yourself, whether this matter wouldn't have been treated differently by both you and Dylan, had it not been a Nietzschean achievement in the first place."

-

Codes working as they should have, the door to the storage room opened to reveal a small, insignificant looking transparent cylinder of some sort. Back in the captain's office they found out the cylinder contained unusual slip portals in rather distant systems. Oddly the systems depicted seemed more or less unstable, hardly the kind of places one would have traveled to out of free choice.

They were still analyzing the data under the disapproving glare of the _Andromeda_'s hologram who had made her appearance when they brought the cylinder into the captain's quarters as the doors whooshed open.

Standing just outside the doorway was Tabea, in her hands an enormous, almost Tyr-sized gauss gun. Both Rhade and Harper jumped up as they saw her.

"How... What... But Rommie," Harper muttered furiously, turning towards the hologram, who merely shrugged her shoulders.

"She's jamming my sensors. I don't know how she does it."

"Gentlemen, I'm surprised," the woman stated haughtily, "I thought you had already figured me out, and yet..." The gun indicated the slip scout on the desk. "Now, if you would slowly hand over Deep Midnight's Voice." Nobody moved. She fired a single shot between them, the bullet ricocheting off the deck to strike the overhead and ricochet back downwards. "Please?" she asked politely, not raising her voice.

"Rommie, activate..." Harper didn't get to finish his order.

"Rommie," interrupted Tabea in a sharp tone, "can't do much to stop me. I'm jamming all her sensors, as far as I'm concerned I'm not here. Don't worry," she then added seeing their troubled expressions, "I don't want anything else beside the slip scout along with a fighter to make my way back. After all, this is Dragan property."

"As a matter of fact," Rhade retorted in coldly, "legend has the slip scout invented by the Khatzovs."

She laughed. "Let's face it: Khatzovs are Dragan property as well."

Rhade carefully picked up the cylinder from the table. "Do you want me to carry it for you to the fighter?"

"Why Commander, how... galant of you." The scarcasm in her voice was obvious . "Please, lead the way." She backed off, still not letting either man out of her sight, yet allowing Rhade to step outside the room.

"Captain!" With a slight nod towards Harper, Rhade set himself in motion.

_"Andromeda_, prep one of the slipfighters in hangar bay 14 for launch," Harper ordered, still looking at Tabea.

"Thank you, Captain." The politenesses in her voice was as false as the smile on her lips.

"My pleasure," he replied, his tone matching hers, as the doors went shut. After a few instants he closed his eyes and breathed loudly:

"Rommie, everything ready?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Very well."

-

Tabea and Rhade reached hangar bay 14 quickly.. _Andromeda _had taken care of clearing their path, not wanting to risk any further incident and the pair met no other crew members on their way to the hanger. Still holding Rhade at gunpoint, Tabea walked up to the nearest of the thirty slipfighters lined up in two impressive rows on each side of the hangar.

"That's far enough," she ordered . "Now put the cylinder slowly down without turning around, put your hands above your head, where I can see them, and get out of here. No hasty movements, please, we don't want me to get jumpy."

The Nietzschean did exactly as he had been told. At the doors of the hangar deck however he hesitated slightly, turning his head lightly to the side, yet not turning around to face her. "This won't do you any good, you know," he stated in an even tone.

"Don't worry about me, Commander; I have what I came here for. Oh, and for the record: Rafe doesn't know a thing."

"I suppose your superiors will be pleased with you," he complimented her lightly.

"I have no superiors: I am Tabea Musseveni, out of Thalia by Paul." Her head shot up in a proud movement, but she stopped on hearing Telemachus Rhade's low chuckle.

"Ah well, what's in a name?"

She frowned. "You really have no idea?"

"I know Paul Musseveni."

It was her turn to chuckle. "Well, you – all of you – will find out soon enough. Get out!"

"Tabea..." He didn't get to finish. Before he could go on Tabea fired a shot at the bulkhead next to him and he hid his face from the resultant sparks .

"I said: get out! And don't try to stop me."

Rhade just nodded and left the hangar bay, locking the doors behind him. On the viewscreen next to the door's panel he could see Tabea picking up the slipscout and climbing into the slipfighter.

_"Andromeda_, do you see that?"

"We all saw that, Rhade!" Harper answered for her.

"Yeah, I guess we all did," the Nietzschean heard Raphael Valentine replying.

In silence Rhade observed the lift off of the fighter. When the small craft was clear from the _Andromeda_, he let out a small sigh and turned around heading for Command.

"Okay, I'll be right there. Captain?"

"I'm already in Command, Rhade. I'm plotting the course to follow her tail."

By the time the Nietzschean had reached the bridge Harper had already finished. Rhade slid behind the helm.

"Commander, stream away."**  
**


	27. Chapter 26

Thank you, Mizor, for your help with this.

**Chapter 26  
**  
Beka was lying on her side, facing the door with her back turned towards Dylan's silent figure; her attempts at getting some rest had not proved very successful, however. Her eyes were closed, but she was wide awake, sleep and rest stubbornly eluding her. After having spent the better part of the past quarter hour listening to the labored, pained breathing of the man behind her, she finally gave it up, turned towards him and opened her eyes.

The sight in front of her did little to put her mind at rest. Although the bruises, swellings and cuts seemed to have improved somewhat thanks to the nanobots Beka had injected Dylan with, the color of his skin looked as ashen as before, the two flushed spots on his cheekbones contrasting to it in a nearly violent manner. He had not regained consciousness, something she was almost grateful for after witnessing the pain attack he had suffered earlier. Even so, there were small spasms running through his body from time to time, as well as tiny tremors distorting his face every now and then. Sighing with worry, the woman gently placed a hand on his chest right above his heart and left it there, lying down again and this time facing him. He felt even hotter than before, his heart-rate too fast and not nearly as strong as she would have liked. Still, it was a comfort to feel the beat at all.

After only a couple of minutes Beka stood up again, picked up a towel, drenched it in cold water and began to carefully cool off his skin, in an halfhearted attempt to bring the fever down. She was perfectly aware of the futility of her actions, knowing that a fever this high meant that something was seriously wrong with him beside the injuries he had sustained from the beating. And that the only effective counter measure against it was finding out what provoked it and treat the cause. Her jaw set straight, her mouth little more than a thin, grim line, she was debating with herself about her next course of action.

Dylan had not convinced her that she should refuse to cooperate with Paul, but he had at least managed to insert some doubts. What if he was right? What if Paul's – and Jonah's – plans regarding her went well beyond blackmailing her into submission; what if by cooperating with them one more time she provided them with all the data they needed, thereby endangering Dylan's importance as a means to control her? She couldn't make up her mind, the doubts about how she should proceed competing with her puzzlement about what seemed to be genuine regret on Jonah's part, as well as with her worries for the man in front of her.

Although she was doing her best to pull herself together, Beka was terrified. Dylan's life was in her hands, and in her hands alone. Even during the Magog attacks, their fights with the Abyss, their dreadful times on Seefra there had always been someone else to turn to when things went really wrong. Whenever something happened beyond her control there had in the end always been Dylan to turn to, as last line of defense. And when Dylan had been down , there had been Harper or Rommie, Trance, Tyr, Rev Bem, Rhade to help her along when she took over from him. This time though the two of them were all alone, and from what she could see Dylan was in deep waters and not likely to be of any help. And truth be told, Beka was used to having Dylan being a wise-guy, a pain in her side and causing major trouble. But she also thought of him as the one in charge, with crazy 'might just work'-ideas that somehow in the end actually succeeded. A Dylan being helpless, dependent and solely in her care was not something she was used to.

She was so lost in her thoughts that it gave her a start to see him abruptly regaining consciousness. For a short moment he became completely still again. But then there was a frown, his mouth twisted in pain and Beka heard his teeth grinding as he clenched his jaws. His eyes, deep set in a face that had become gaunt in a matter of hours, opened all of a sudden, trying to focus on his surroundings and obviously failing to do so. His hands clawing the blankets, the muscles on his arms rigid one more time while the tendons on his neck stood out from the tension, the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ could no longer prevent himself from crying out loud in pain. Seeing him writhing around on the bed, it became quite obvious to Beka, who had jumped up in panic as she saw him jerking up to full consciousness, that whatever control he was attempting to impose on himself, was failing miserably. She carefully approached him, reaching out for him when she was near enough.

"Dylan!" she called out softly, her voice nearly inaudible because of his low, hoarse cries. She had never heard another living being produce similar sounds. It seemed more like the deep, vibrant scream that erupted from a planet's soil shaking from an earthquake, a ferocious, dreadful, terrifying sound. As her hand touched his shoulder he finally seemed to notice her. He turned his head towards her, obviously struggling to focus on her, to cease writhing, to stop screaming.

"B...Be-ka..." he managed to get out through his teeth, before a new wave of pain hit him, washing away his resolve.

She sprang to her feet and hit the com-link inserted next to the bed.

"Jonah, I need you! Jonah, I need you here right now!" She managed to keep her voice under control, making it sound urgent, but not hysterical. Her tone didn't match her mood, however. Turning anew towards the bed, she once again reached for Dylan, who seemed no longer aware of his surroundings, thrashing around on his blankets and clawing with his hands at his bare arms as if wanting to tear himself open. Beka grabbed his hands with her own, holding them in a strong grip, not even flinching as she felt his fingers close around hers in a nearly bone-breaking grasp.

Although she was preventing him from scratching his skin, Beka couldn't keep him from writhing and tensing up every other second. She had neither the strength nor the skill to stop him from doing so without injuring him further. Luckily, however, the doors slid open and in came an almost running Jonah.

"Beka, what...?" The sight of her struggling with the convulsing man on the bed stopped him in mid-sentence. He almost threw himself at Dylan, kneeling next to him and pushing the Vedran's shoulders down as strongly as he could. Relieved, Beka stepped back from her captain, rubbing a shaking hand across her face.

"Beka..." Jonah urged her. She looked at him like someone who just woke up from a nightmare. "Quick, run to medical, get some painkillers – as many as you find..." The Seefran was almost shouting to cover up the noise that still came from Dylan.

"But they are all altered," Beka protested just as loudly.

"Yes, they are, but so were already the ones you administered him earlier – and the nanobots," he breathlessly concluded, spurting out the information he had been holding back. It didn't matter anymore, she already knew that something was seriously wrong with her friend – and the struggle with the man in agony took up too much of his concentration to think of anything else to say to her. She didn't react, didn't answer, didn't leave either.

"Beka..." he said again, then almost angrily: "Dammit, Beka!" He turned his head towards her and saw her standing there motionless, her eyes widened in terror, her face even paler than before.

"So, I... I did this to him?" she then whispered horrified.

"No... no! Beka, listen..." He lost his hold on Dylan who jerked upwards violently and fell back on the mattress, his frantic movements almost knocking Jonah off the bed. The Seefran had no choice. Carefully aiming and measuring his strength, he delivered a punch to Dylan's chin knocking him unconscious.

"What are you doing?" Beka almost flew towards him, her hands turned to claws and reaching up for the Seefran's face, who grasped her wrists and pulled her in into a bear-hug. She struggled, yet he kept her as close to him as possible until she finally calmed down. Squeezing her upper arms tightly he urged her to look at him:

"Beka, listen to me! You didn't do this, Paul did! He told me that he had altered all nanobot-injectors he had found aboard, starting with the one in the cockpit. Even when he treated me during our last flight back from Ral Parthia he was already using this new nanobot-generation. He has managed to individualize their triggering mechanisms as well as their effect, and he has also changed several painkiller-devices, providing them with drugs outbalancing the addiction effects. When Dylan received the medication it probably caused some sort of chain-reaction leading to those attacks he suffers from now. And since you told me that he is genetically altered..." his voice trailed off.

She stared at him, blankly, and then she slowly nodded.

"...there is no way to know how exactly this might affect him," Beka finished for him. She stepped away from Jonah and sat down next to Dylan, placing a hand on his chest that was rising with difficulty. Draeger watched her, hoping she would digest the news quickly. But then he saw her starting to gently rock herself and heard a muffled sob escape her lips.

"Oh, my God, I killed him... I killed him... I killed Dylan..." she kept moaning over and over, until Jonah stepped in and lifted her back on her feet, gently shaking her shoulders.

"No, you didn't kill him. He isn't dead, he might not die, and if anyone did this to him, then it was Paul. Paul, shooting me with flash bots rising my aggression- and strength-level, Paul altering all injectors, Paul letting this go that far. Stop it Beka, get a grip on yourself!"

Her eyes searched for his. She was visibly struggling with herself, but then she seemed to calm down, and her face became distant - with resignation and mistrust.

"Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Because he used his flash on me, without asking, without telling. We're supposed to be partners. You don't betray your partner... Like you said earlier: no one takes advantage of me and gets away with it."

"So, what does that mean? Are you... are you going to help us out of this?"

Jonah Draeger sighed, his eyes fixing the ceiling. Finally, he shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know, Beka, I really don't know. You see, I'm in this here because he..." his head indicated Dylan's limp body, "took away my home, my status, my position, everything I was."

"But he didn't! He might have taken away everything that you had, but not what you are... He just tried returning Tarn Vedra to its former glory..." Beka pleaded.

"Tarn Vedra isn't my home. My home is... was Seefra. And that is gone for good. And I want something back, something no one but Paul seems able to give me."

"You want power, influence," Beka stated lowly, her voice not surprised but rather matter-of-fact-ish.

"What if I do?"

"What for?"

"For the sake of it."

"How very Nietzschean. Paul really picked us good, didn't he now? Yet he betrayed you, me... And he'll do it again, if it serves his purposes. What will you do about it?" Her eyes had narrowed to tiny slits of ice.

"First of all, I'm going to help you..." He stopped and turned towards Dylan, gazing down on him in a weighing manner. "And I'll try saving him. We'll take it from there."

"In that case we'll have to head back to Myrmidon. There's no way Dylan can survive the slipstream ride to Ral Parthia in his present state," Beka said in a tense tone, approaching the bed again.

Jonah nodded, but then he shrugged his shoulders."We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. First we have to get him filled up with some tranquilizers."

"But with all of them altered..."

"Beka, I told you: he has them in his system already. Whatever is going on with him, it's already happening. It might or might not kill him but such an elevated pain-level over such a long period of time will certainly do so. I didn't try to knock him out permanently and I don't know how long he will stay unconscious. We have to keep the pain down."

Their eyes locked across the bed and then Beka slowly nodded.

"Okay, I'll get the drugs. I'll be back in a minute..."

-

"Beka! How did you get in here?"

She didn't stop her rummaging around in the drawer she had opened and answered without turning around: "How do you think, Paul? This ship is my home, my life. There isn't anything you can program or insert into it that I can't undo." She continued her frantic search, pulling out the drawer's contents and letting them fall to the deck, like she had already done with the contents of so many drawers before this one. The entire medical bay looked even more messier than previously.

Musseveni didn't allow himself to be provoked by her curt reply. He slowly approached her, peering into the box she had placed on the deck beside her. His eyebrows arched up towards his hairline and pointing with his index finger, he silently counted the items displayed before him.

"22 injectors, Beka? Of painkillers? What do you plan? Have you hidden a fleet somewhere that you now want to sedate?"

She briefly looked up at him "Just hold your breath, Paul. I need them for Dylan. He's in pain..." Her voice died out on her, as she briefly closed her eyes.

"What? From Jonah's beating? Come on, Beka, this is ridiculous... I admit, that was a harsh treatment he received, but – hell, 22 injectors filled up to full dose?"

"Dylan's heavy-worlder," Beka told him lowly.

"Yes, but he is not a heavy-world yak..." There was no mistaking Musseveni's tone for anything else but amused. "Aren't we going a little bit over the top here?"

"No!" Beka exploded, jumping to her feet and facing him with eyes on fire. "No, we aren't going 'over the top'. I gave him nanobots and painkillers earlier; they provoked some kind of reaction with him. He has been writhing in agony for the past hour, and all of it because you altered the injectors... He's in agony, Paul!" she exclaimed accusingly. "What the hell did you do to him?"

"How am I supposed to know? They weren't meant for him. However: I could take a look at him," he offered eagerly. "Perform some scans, take some samples, see if I can come up with a reason for this symptoms..." . Beka's description of the High Guard's reaction had further sparkled his interest already awakened by Jonah.

"Do you really think I'll let you anywhere near him?" she growled.

"Do you really think I'll let you decide on that?" Musseveni shot back, rising one of his eyebrows.

"Paul, if you so much as touch a single hair on his head..."

"Please, my love, don't embarrass yourself with empty threats. Besides: his life might really be in danger here. And then who knows? I might come up with a solution to save it... Are you willing to take a chance on it?"

The _Eureka Maru_'s captain glared at him in silence. At first her lips twisted downwards, her hands clenched themselves into fists, but then her features and posture relaxed. "Very well, then. Come along and do your best with him..."

Paul Musseveni grabbed a belt that had a variety of medical instruments attached to it and threw it casually over his shoulder.

"Alright, Beka, let's go. And don't worry, I'll do my best to save your precious captain. Lead the way," he urged her, stepping aside to let her pass him by. A smile played across his lips as he followed closely behind her. If she really allowed him anywhere near Hunt, it could only mean that she was even more worried about her captain's condition than she had admitted.


	28. Chapter 27

Thank you all for reviewing, commenting and reading this.

And **squid109: **many, many thanks for your help with this.**  
**

**Chapter 27**

He was conscious again. Beka could hear the guttural, low screams through the doors she had left open when leaving for medical. She broke into a jog, literally bursting into the _Maru_'s captain's quarters and precipitating herself towards the bed on which Dylan was once more writhing in agony. Although by now used to it, the pilot still felt her stomach tighten up in knots at the sight before her. She threw the box with the tranquilizers into Jonah's arms, who stood by the door with a relieved expression on his face as he appraised her return with the medicinals in her possession . He quickly pulled out an injector and approached the bed.

"No!" The sharp order made Draeger stop and turn around. His eyes widened upon seeing Paul Musseveni hurrying in after Beka. Surprised, Jonah eyed Beka with a sharp, inquiring glance, that still persisted after he noticed her slight, approving nod.

Grabbing for the belt still thrown over his shoulder Paul Musseveni unceremoniously shoved the Seefran out of his way and bent over Dylan.

"No? Why not?" Beka asked aggressively while she sat down next to her captain's convulsing body, trying to get a grip on him.

"Because I need him conscious. I have to run some tests. The painkillers could affect the results. I need him alert and focused," Musseveni concluded and reached down to Dylan, touching his bare shoulder. As soon as he felt the strange hand on him, Dylan opened his eyes, with pupils by now surrounded with pearl-white rings growing larger, and – still tensing in pain – attempted to flinch away as if in fear.

"Alert and focused?" Jonah asked in disdain. "Well, good luck with that!"

The captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ frantically rolled his head on his pillows, still trying to pull away from Musseveni's hands. As his eyes fell on Beka, who had stood up again to make room for Paul, there was a flicker of recognition and resolve to be seen on his face.

"Be... Beka..." he spat out, his arm outstretched towards her, struggling to sit up. "Beka, please... help me, I... I just... can't take this... any longer!" He managed to get himself into a half upright position, and his XO took his hand, quickly pushing the pillows out of her way and sliding behind him on the bed. She tried to reassure him, whispering into his ear and gently forcing him to let himself be eased down against her. Her arms encircled him safely reaching around him from behind.

"That's right, that's a good boy, come on, Dylan, don't worry... Now, just look at Paul and let him check you up... It won't take long! Come on, Dylan, you can do it, relax..." she softly repeated in an endless murmur. Although it seemed to soothe him, he was still rigid in her arms, his flesh compact and hot to touch, his muscles as hard as concrete. _Oh my God_, she thought wearily, _these are no fever seizures, he's sure as hell overdosing on flash._ She didn't stop her comforting whispers, bracing herself against his renewed struggle to get away from Musseveni, who by now was scanning him from head to toe. He finished rather quickly and reached for an extractor.

"Jonah, she might need help to hold him down," he ordered. Draeger approached the bed and sat down at Dylan's feet, firmly grabbing his legs and pressing them down. It wasn't of much help.

As the extractor touched his neck, drawing blood and tissue samples, a new wave of pain washed over him and Dylan hit rock bottom. He jerked up, desperately trying to free himself, but was struck down by the searing fire running through his entire body. Burying her hand in his hair, Beka pushed against the back of his head, forcing it down on her shoulder. The screams, that she so dreaded, started anew and this time she could clearly hear him shouting out her name again and again, his hoarse cries somewhat muffled by her jacket. Luckily Paul quickly finished his task, and Jonah immediately grabbed one of the injectors and shot the High Guard officer a full dose of painkillers into his thigh.

The painkiller was not nearly as effective as Beka had hoped, the pain reluctantly yielding to the painkiller, and Dylan screamed and screamed on until he had no voice left. Finally though it took effect, and as he laid exhausted resting on Beka's shoulder, she couldn't help from pressing her lips against his forehead. Panting he lifted his head, searching for her eyes:

"Thank you," he mouthed silently through parched lips, before his eyelids dropped; he drifted off to sleep after a couple of minutes.

-

Two hours later Beka left Dylan alone with Jonah and headed for medical in search of Paul Musseveni. Not only had the Nietzschean founding father not come back to them, he had not been seen or heard from since he had left the captain's quarters.

One hour after he had received the pain medication Dylan had briefly awakened, and Beka gave him another massive dose as the pain had started to blossom up again. She had been reluctant to deliver it to him so soon after the previous dose, but Jonah had advised her to do so before the pain wave reached once more top level. She had hoped for some results of Musseveni's before risking another shot, but as trying to contact the old man had proved futile she had finally agreed to follow Draeger's advice. By now another hour had passed, however, and they were only 45 minutes away from Crimeea. She simply had to know what Paul Musseveni had come up with before entering the system.

"Paul, open up," Beka said into the com unity at the doors to medical. That they did indeed open on the spot took her a little by surprise, though.

"My love!" The captain of the _Maru_ briefly closed her eyes; over the past few weeks she had come to loathe the ironic, a little breathless voice – during the past hours she had learned to hate it.

"What have you come up with?" she bluntly asked the man without any introductory pleasantries.

"Oh, are we a bit testy?"

"Paul, please..." she sighed wearily. It didn't sound like asking.

"Fascinating really. I wish I had known earlier." He turned towards a tall panel and started quickly switching through its diagrams, but refrained from further explanations. Beka waited patiently for a couple of seconds, but then burst out in anger:

"Care to elaborate?"

"Do you know what this is?" Musseveni asked her curtly, still focusing on the screens and not looking towards her.

"DNA-strings..." the pilot answered vaguely.

"Your captain's DNA to be more precise. On the left screen you have them as they are; the right one shows you what is happening to them."

"???" Beka lifted both shoulders and her eyebrows.

"The nanobots, Beka! They're reacting with him beyond my wildest dreams..."

An ice-cold feeling descended somewhere on Beka's neck, creeping down her spine.

"What are you saying, exactly?"

"The bots, they're reproducing on their own in his cells. The flash is simply becoming an integral part of his DNA-strings and all cell-growth in his body is being effectuated on this new premise."

"But this is killing him!" she shouted in his face.

"Not necessarily. It's slowly altering his genetic material, and I suspect that his immune system is battling the new cells with everything it has. Hence the pain attacks... There is no telling whether the flash or his immune system will win in the end. But if he survives this – it might well be that his body also comes up with an own way to combat addiction effects. A new race, Beka," excited he took her shoulders and started to slightly shake her, "imagine the possibilities..."

She squirmed her way out of his hands, staring furiously and not little frightened at the exalted figure in front of her.

"What if he doesn't survive it?"

He simply shrugged his shoulders.

"It still is a major break through. And I'll have his body to examine. Either way it's an enormous step forward," he replied with sickening enthusiasm.

Beka turned away from him, involuntarily trying to hide the expression she knew her face was bearing from him. She raised her hands to her head and slowly stroked her fingers through her hair. Fighting for composure she crossed her arms on her chest and slowly turned back to him.

"What are the odds?"

"Ah, Beka..."

"What are the odds, Paul?"

"Frankly, I don't know. Jonah said something about Vedran alterations... What do you know about it?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. Neither does he."

"That's awkward."

"Really?" she asked ironically. "He is a 348-year-old human with heavy grav genes from a planet that has been cut from slipstream for 308 years and was originally populated by blue centaurs and men, with whom the centaurs played games with their DNA. 'Awkward', Paul, doesn't even begin to describe it."

"Well, I'll wake him up. Maybe he knows more about it."

Alarmed, Beka took a step towards him.

"Paul, no! Please don't wake him up. The pain..." she squeezed her eyes, remembering the awful events of the past hours. "Don't wake him up," she repeated lowly. "He really doesn't know much."

"Who does then? Who has that information?"

"There were those guys – Paradine they called themselves, claimed that they were nothing but evolved Vedrans. They all said Dylan was one of them because his father was a Paradine, too. But I think that now Dylan is the only Paradine left. And they never really told him what this was all about. Nor did anyone else. Dylan doesn't know much – nor does he seem to care. So please, just leave him alone with that."

Musseveni nodded thoughtfully, though clearly not yet convinced. Watching him closely, Beka saw his doubts, his expression a distant echo of her own while she was digesting the information she had just received. The silence stretched between them, but then the _Maru_'s captain straightened herself and turned, seemingly having reached a decision.

"I need to go," she said, leaving him alone and startled.

-

Musseveni almost had to run to catch up with her. To his surprise she didn't head back to the _Maru_'s captain's quarters but turned towards the cockpit.

"Beka, wait! Hey! Beka..." he shouted at her back. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Why don't you try and guess?" she threw across her shoulder without stopping to wait.

Alerted by the loud voices Yvain, the Nietzschean officer, who had been leisurely hanging around the _Maru_'s bar, jumped to his feet and rushed towards the cockpit, reaching it just seconds before Beka Valentine arrived. Arms crossed on his chest he blocked the entrance, staring at an imaginary point above her head.

"Get out of my way, bonehead," the blonde hissed viciously, but he just shook his head 'no' after throwing a glance past her at Paul Musseveni, who was rushing in behind her. The old man grabbed her arm, only to nearly loose his footing and stumble back against the rail as she spun around furiously.

"Rebekkah, what are you up to?" he then asked after motioning Yvain to not interfere.

"I'm turning back to Myrmidon."

"Oh, I very much doubt that."

"Watch me! What are you going to do? Kill me? Who's gonna fly you around then?"

He mustered her calmly.

"I could..."

"What?" she interrupted. "Kill Dylan? From what you told me he's probably already dying. And we both know that in his current state he is more than unlikely to make it through Crimeea, let alone through a 41-hour-slipstream ride. Now let me through."

She looked at him defiantly, every inch a commanding presence. Musseveni's eyes narrowed, carefully weighing her feelings and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that she was dead serious. Annoyed, he quickly reconsidered his options.

She was right, of course. With the nanobots ripping every cell in Dylan Hunt's body apart and reconfiguring his genetic imprint in ways Musseveni hadn't even begun to comprehend, the odds of the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ surviving the strain of the voyage to Ral Parthia was a more than improbable possibility.

With Beka Valentine refusing to fly them through slipstream he still could try to force her by letting someone else at the helm and trick her into taking over once things turned ugly. He had done so before. Yet her the knowledge of her captain's condition changed the equation. While perfectly aware of what he perceived as her superb survival instincts, Paul Musseveni had by now studied the Matriarch of his race long enough to know that they would not outweigh her loyalty and concern for Hunt. If he didn't survive, then Beka Valentine would see to it that they all died as well – survival instincts be damned.

He briefly considered whether his experiments with Beka and her predecessors along with the samples and scans from Hunt would suffice to ensure a successful outcome of his endeavors, but decided otherwise. This was a risk he could not afford. While things had started to develop rather well, there were still many questions left unanswered. From what he suspected, many of them could be provided by captain Hunt's reactions, while Rebekkah on the other hand still remained his most successful guinea pig so far.

Nonetheless, he didn't want to give in to her will completely. At least, he didn't want it to look that way, not considering the amount of cooperation he still needed from her, not in front of Yvain – actually not at all.

"My dear, I'm wondering... Would you care for a deal?"


	29. Chapter 28

Thanks a lot for all the reviews. I appreciate it.

_Squid109_, thank you for being the best beta-reader one could wish for.

**Chapter 28  
**  
"A deal?" Beka's voice sounded suspicious and distant.

"Let's go to the crew's quarters!" Musseveni suggested mildly, stepping out of the way to let her pass him by. She didn't move.

"Let's not! You can tell me here."

His eyes scrutinized her. Her eyes and body language were void of all expression. After a couple of seconds Musseveni nodded slightly.  
"Yvain," he ordered, "please give us a moment!" A little bit uncertain the Nietzschean officer threw a quick glance towards Beka then back to his superior, but then simply nodded and left the cockpit.

"Well?" Beka urged the old man as soon as they were alone.

"We could turn around and head back to Myrmidon – this time. And I might be persuaded to help Hunt provided..." Beka threw a quick glance to the chronometer showing the count-down set for the auto-pilot.

"I haven't got all day, Paul."

"Patience, Rebekkah, patience. This is difficult for me, too. Admitting limitations never came easy to me."

"Get on with it!"

"Even on Myrmidon, even with all medical facilities available there, the doctors, my own skills... It might not be enough to find a way to save Hunt – in case his body is unable to save itself, that is."

Beka's eyes widened. She had been seriously concerned for Dylan's life in slipstream, but hear Paul Musseveni admit that the High Guard officer's condition was in fact so precarious as to possibly put him beyond hope surpassed her worst fears.

During the past years she had – along with the others – acquired an almost religious belief not so much in Dylan's actual abilities to  
beat the odds as in his incredibly good luck. In front of overwhelming adversities Beka had come to trust in Dylan's lucky star as if it were a natural law of physics, an eternal truth. Yet deep down in her heart she had always known that luck – no matter how great – eventually ran out. So she had made sure that she was there to help along whenever his good fortune turned a blind eye towards Dylan Hunt and – subsequently – to them all. And somehow her presence had so far been enough to make the balance of fate tip towards them. The one time she had not stood by him and by her crew the outcome had been disastrous and left most people dead, Rommie blown to pieces and Harper, Rhade, Trance, Dylan and herself stuck on Seefra for almost a year. Therefore, while not overly full of herself, Beka Valentine had gained enough self confidence to presume that her keeping an eye on things would be enough to ensure that her friends stayed safe. Clearly this assumption was turning to be false.

"So what do you propose?"

"An exchange. I let Dylan Hunt return to the _Andromeda Ascendant_, where he can be provided with the best medical care in the Known Worlds. Seamus Harper takes his place on Myrmidon and helps me with my research. And – should we come up with answers that might help Hunt along – we share our insights with the _Andromeda_."

Beka's face showed no sign of surprise, anger or annoyance. Her expression was placid, as if Musseveni hadn't offered more than an  
invitation to dinner. Paul Musseveni was astonished at her lack of reaction, until he saw a small vein on her temple pulse.

_Is this it?_ Beka thought frantically. _Is this the gambit Trance mentioned? Because if this is so, then I can just as well grab the next force-lance and blow my brains away._ Her eyes still staring coldly into Paul Musseveni's unblinking, opaque orbs, she didn't even dare breathe. _Dylan or Harper? Dear God, Rev Bem was right: the Universe does have a sick sense of humor. Harper or Dylan? What kind of troubled mind would come up which such a Devil's bargin?  
_  
She pictured Dylan's pain contorted body, recalled his agonized voice screaming out her name. _"Beka, please, please, help  
me!"_ While he had always expected her to help him, this had been the first time he actually had voiced it loud, to help... him - not the  
cause, the crew, the CW. **Him**! _'Voiced it', hell! He begged me..._ Beka thought desperately. She had to make the deal. She had to call in Harper and ask him to become a willing victim in this disgusting game of power. She didn't want to lose Dylan; Harper would... _Gods, Harper! _The disease-struck, skinny, hungry excuse of a boy she once took in. Who had come to trust her like she had never been trusted before by anyone, who loved her in an unwavering, devoted manner that asked for nothing in return. Harper, who always made her feel his world turned all around her, Harper who - though infested by Magog – believed in what she said to soothe him, not because he really thought the words to be true, but because it was her who told him. Harper, who came up with schemes to cheer her up, who went with her hunting for treasures, turned every supply run into an adventure and never lacked ideas to save her time and again. Harper, who had seen Earth oppressed, defeated, destroyed. Whose childhood had been wasted under the Dragans' rule...

"No," she heard herself, her voice flat and quiet. And then, slightly louder: "No."

"No?" Musseveni rose his brows. But then he shrugged. "Very well, then. Yvain..."

"Wait!" Beka rushed forward. "I have a counter proposal."

"I'm listening!" Paul Musseveni's face was motionless, but his eyes looked sharper, more alert than a few seconds before. He seemed to  
believe himself on the verge to a breakthrough with Beka. She sighed, noticing the look and sadly admitting to herself that he was probably right.

"Am I assuming correctly that those trips to Ral Parthia are meant to just to make me submit to the tests you need? Just to make me trigger those damned bots of yours?"

"Partly," the old man agreed. "But I do have business to attend there, too. I could use other pilots, though." There was a moment of  
silence, Musseveni clearly considering his options, while Beka simply waited to see how far he would let her in on his plans. "But I do admit," he finally continued, "that you have been by far the most successful one to get through the stress of piloting and the flash."

"Too many of your pretty boys ending up dead?" Rebekkah Valentine couldn't prevent herself from asking ironically.

"Beka," he faked hurt, "why do you always have to be so heartless, dear?"

"Part of my natural charm," she shrugged. "Now, about that offer... We fly back to Myrmidon, you take care of Dylan and I submit to all tests you want. I'll trigger the bots voluntarily as often as and in all circumstances you deem fit. But there'll be no Harper."

"How generous of you! What if Captain Hunt dies?"

"See to it that he doesn't. He dies, the deal is off."

Paul Musseveni turned her back towards her, seeming to consider her offer, a wide smile spreading on his face. It was perfect: with the facilities on Myrmidon he would be able to perform the tests on Beka directly in the laboratory without any delay between her reaction and the evaluation of it, the process of research would speed up substantially. As would the results. Facing her again, Musseveni spread his arms wide:

"Rebekkah, I am sorry, but that is not an offer at all... I go through all this trouble, he dies and I have nothing?"

"Like I said: see to it that he doesn't..." Her eyes and her voice were as cold as ice.

"But..."

"No buts. I'll do whatever you tell me, provided Dylan lives."

Musseveni weighed her carefully. The captain of the _Maru_ was plainly deadly serious. Which was not really a problem. He had brought his complaint forward just to drag on the negotiations, as he always thought it useful to find out exactly how far he could go with the  
people he needed. From what he saw the young woman had clearly reached her limits.

He slowly nodded his head in agreement. "Very well," he said. "We have a deal..."

Beka nodded curtly and turned towards the cockpit practically throwing herself into the pilot's seat and started entering in the new course, as if afraid Musseveni might reconsider if she allowed him more time to think. A couple of seconds later she she heard his receeding footsteps as he left the cockpit.

_"Look me in the eye and tell me it has nothing to do with flash, Beka..."_ Dylan's words echoed through her mind, while the _Maru_'s captain plotted the new course. She vigorously shook her head as if trying to expell his words and took hold of the controls, pulling the old freighter about and heading back for Myrmidon.

_"I'll let them throw you out of the High Guard and off the _Andromeda_, I swear it to you, Beka." _She couldn't get rid of him. _Damn' him!_ Again she shook her head. He wouldn't do that to her, he knew why she was doing it... Her lips pressed together, Rebekkah Valentine was staring straight ahead into the vast darkness spreading in front of her. She closed her eyes. _Not now, Beka, don't think about it now._

Lonely tears escaped from under her closed eyelids and slowly ran down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. She longed for sleep, for rest after those past gruesome hours: Dylan's capture, the beating, the agony, the deal. Reopening her eyes, she straightened herself up in the seat and frowned. _One of these days, Paul Musseveni, _she thought, her mind flicking from one thought to another, '_one of these days...' _But then she jerked up from her musings, as Jonah's voice came in over the com-link, loud, alarmed and worried:

"Beka, come in!"

"Jonah, this is Beka! What's up?"

"Get down here! It's Dylan. He's crashing."


	30. Chapter 29

Thanks for reviewing, everyone.

And _squid109_, thank you very much for your help.**  
**

**Chapter 29**

The flight back to Myrmidon was done mostly on auto-pilot with Beka spending most of the time with Jonah and Paul in the _Maru_'s captain's quarters; all of them doing their best to prevent Dylan from dying. Even with both the Seefran and Musseveni's combined skills: they nearly lost him twice during the flight. Finding the right balance between administering enough tranquillizers to keep the pain down without sedating him to death proved a tricky business in Dylan's condition.

The fact that Beka was constantly sitting with them didn't help matters much. She had managed to perform quite well the first time around after Jonah had called her in for help, doing exactly what he told her. However the first emergency left her in an almost prostrated state, her thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes all running wild with her. She had left Dylan's side only long enough to adjust their course and re-check the auto-pilot. The rest of time she spent near him, utterly useless, with each one of the two new emergencies leaving her more frantic, too upset to really be of use, yet too terrified to just leave and stay out of the way.

The two men taking care of the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ were too busy just keeping his body from shutting down one cell after another to try and reassure the desperate woman in their midst – or even attempt to convince her to leave. Not that Paul Musseveni would have given Beka's state of mind a single thought, anyway.

The founding father of the Nietzschean race was all in all rather pleased with himself. The deal he had struck with Beka bore a lot of advantages. With the very much state of the art research facilities on Myrmidon, his work was likely to progress a lot faster if the tests were done there, their results taken into account as soon as they were delivered. He knew that Beka didn't trust him with Dylan, but truth was that she didn't need to worry: the case the Vedran presented was more than interesting, and Musseveni had high hopes that in the long run the High Guard captain would prove as just as useful a guinea-pig as Beka. All he had to do was get both the _Andromeda_'s captain and XO back to Myrmidon in one piece. Something that was turning out to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated.

Dylan's physiology was somewhat of a mystery to Paul: everything looked just as average as with the next guy - until you got down to the cell-nuclear level. From then on it was nothing he'd ever seen before. Jonah was also more than just overwhelmed by the contradictory reactions their patient's body came up with in response to whatever the two men tried on him in order to get him stabilized. And judging from Beka's behavior it soon became clear that whatever happened to her captain would determine whether or not they would reach their destination safely. While Paul seemed more or less unconcerned with the pilot, Jonah had quickly realized that – her worries for Dylan set aside – one of the reasons for Beka's persistence in staying with them was to see for her own how they were faring in keeping the Vedran alive. It made him wonder what would happen if they didn't succeed.

_ „Rebekkah, you really are in no position to threaten me. Do you really want me to believe that you'll risk your life," he hesitated a little, „... your life and his, just to prove a point?"_

_„Jonah," Beka laughed in a mildly amused manner, „I've risked his life and mine for much lesser causes more times already than you could ever dream of."_

_„With your survival instincts? Oh, I really doubt that." The Seefran sounded unconvinced._

_„Don't!"_

Jonah Draeger hadn't come this far in his life without learning to listen and learn from the things others told him. He remembered his exchange with the _Maru_'s captain – and had no curiosity or desire whatsoever to find out exactly how far Rebekkah Valentine could push herself on this matter. He swore inwardly at his own carelessness of not having taken another pilot with him – promising himself to never again forget about it, should they make it out of it.

-

They made it. The very instant the _Maru _touched ground on Myrmidon Beka sprinted out of the pilot's seat and hurried back towards the ship's entrance, already wide open and awaiting the med team that rushed in and out again, carrying Dylan along with them. Neither Jonah Draeger nor Paul Musseveni even attempted to try to stop the _Andromeda_'s XO from going along with them on the small ambulance slider, instead simply following suit in another one right behind them, arriving at the huge medical compound Paul Musseveni had picked out. Even there, with all medical equipment and personnel one could only wish for, Dylan's condition remained critical for the next 42 hours, providing more touch-and-go moments than Musseveni cared to admit to. In the end the High Guard captain came through, though exactly how and why nobody could really tell, but which Musseveni was determined to find out.

-

„Beka?"

She jerked up from her chair, in which she had been slumped down in, totally exhausted. She had been finally admitted to the cool, sterile chamber Dylan had been placed in hours ago where she had found him sleeping, looking almost normal again, if still a bit pale, but no longer bruised or feverish – and, most importantly, no longer on life-support either. She had been completely worn out when word had finally come that he was at last out of danger, as were Musseveni and Draeger themselves, who had stayed in place monitoring the doctors taking care of the _Andromeda_'s captain. As the two men had departed to their quarters, looking for some much needed peace and quiet, Beka had asked to stay in place, wanting to see Dylan and finally managing to get her way. She had been offered a comfortable chair placed next to his bed, in which she had curled herself up, falling asleep as well.

The faint whisper made her jump out of it, for just a moment she wondered where the hell she was. but then her gaze fell on Dylan's face, his eyes half open and looking at her inquiringly.

„It's getting almost something of a habit..." he croaked out in a low voice.

„What is?" she asked, holding a glass of water for him to drink.

Relieved, he took a few sips before answering:

„Me waking up in some bed or other with you watching over me."

„Yeah," she sighed, „maybe we should try break it someday. It's not a habit I'm particularly fond of."

He smiled wearily, his eyelids dropping.

„Neither am I. Are we on Ral Parthia?"

„No... No, we're not," Beka said, hesitating.

His eyes focused on her.

„Well?" Dylan inquired, after having waited for a little while for her to continue. „Where are we?"

„Back on Myrmidon."

„What? How?" he hurriedly asked, trying to rise himself on his elbows.

Dreading another debate and not feeling in the least bit up to it – and knowing him to be not up to it either – Beka pushed him back down determinedly.

„I flew us back. How else do you suppose that we could've gotten back?"

"Why did Musseveni and Draeger agree to it?"

„Because you were dying and they knew that they didn't stand a chance to keep me at bay in the event of your death..." she admitted, trying at the same time to sound a bit casual.

He nodded lightly.

„I can imagine the hard time you gave them. Can you fill me in?"

„On what?"

„On what the hell happened?"

„Later," she said; a scrutinizing look into his face showed her that the short conversation had exhausted him already. The fact that he didn't argue proved her right. A mere couple of seconds later Dylan was again sound asleep.

Which also provided Beka Valentine with some time to figure out how to tell him about the deal she had struck for his sake...

-

The next time he woke up, Dylan was all alone. He looked around taking in the room he was lying in – a not too large, clean, sterile space with lots of medical devices all of which he was attached to. There were heavy curtains in front of a fairly large window blocking out the light from the two suns, the light that did penetrate tinging the air in a slight shade of purple. Judging from wanness of the light he presumed the day to be almost gone. Wherever Beka was, he thought, she'd be back shortly.

In spite of still feeling weaker than he could ever recall having felt in his life, Dylan decided to not drift off to sleep again, determined to wait for Beka. Battling his dropping eyelids though proved a harder task than expected. And it seemed like only seconds had passed until he lost that fight.

-

„What the...?" he almost jerked up swinging before he found his wrist caught in a strong grip, that immobilized his arm.

„Captain Hunt, calm down!"

As Dylan looked up into the hazel eyes of Jonah Draeger he almost seemed to shrink back into his mattress.

„Don't worry, there's nothing to be afraid of. I'm not hereto hurt you," Draeger hastily tried to reassure the man in front of him.

„I'm not afraid..." the High Guard officer pressed out, his eyes belying his comment. The Seefran nodded slightly amused and let go of his patient's arm, quietly observing the other man's gaze searching the room.

„The hell you're not!" he told him in an even voice. „I understand; in your position I'd be scared as well. But you really have no reason to fear me – or anything else at the moment. You're safe for the time being."

Wearily rubbing a hand over his face Dylan sighed audibly. ‚Safe for the time being' had a somewhat ominous sound to it and he strongly suspected it to have something to do with Beka's absence. From the light outside his windows he supposed it to be at least midmorning and yet she still wasn't there.

„Where..." He choked a little and gratefully accepted the glass Jonah offered him. In spite of fluids being pumped into him, his mouth felt as dry as a desert. „Where is Beka?" he then asked after downing the water.

„She and Musseveni have some business to attend to. She'll drop by in the afternoon, I suppose..." Draeger answered him a bit evasively. He was well aware that Beka and Paul had reached some kind of agreement in order to get Hunt back to Myrmidon and into proper medical care, and he assumed the deal to have something to do with the new nanobots his ‚partner' had designed, but so far none of them had let him in on the details. He therefore preferred to not discuss any of it at length with anybody – least of all with Beka's captain, who was obviously both worried and still not quite up to any kind of strenuous debate.

The monitors above Dylan's head showed all of his functions to be more or less stable, and Draeger also noticed that there had been a slight reduction in the amount of medication he was receiving; but the scanner implanted in his spine indicated that there still was enhanced cell regeneration going on in his body, although the pace seemed to have slowed down. The Seefran was reluctant to take any chances. In spite of all their efforts, he, Musseveni, and all supporting doctors had not been able to come up with valid explanations when presented with what was going on with the Vedran's DNA . As a matter of fact even the samples taken from Hunt's unaltered cells proved the man's genetical make-up to be a total and complete mystery. None of them had ever encountered anything similar – and none of them could make sense of it. Apart from his original DNA displaying a multitude of alkaline bases way beyond anything anyone had ever encountered in any sentient being – most of them of unknown function, Dylan Hunt's cell cycle seemed also to have an extremely reduced generation-time. The flash-bots had apparently sped up this process to maximum while they were at the same time devouring the variety of alkaline bases in his cells, leaving him with only the usual ones. So far both procedures remained an enigma, all logic stubbornly eluding the scientists' observations.

Musseveni had tried to figure it out by himself, but after just one day he had called in for help. They had tried to come up with some sensible answers, alternatively going through huge amounts of unintelligible Vedran files Musseveni had collected over the years (both during the time of the old Commonwealth as well as later on on Seefra) and gazing uncomprehendingly at the samples they had taken from Hunt. So far it hadn't done them much good. They had come up with some medication that kept the Commonwealth officer's vital functions in balance while his body was going on a rollercoaster with him, but they had been unable to stop, let alone reverse the process. If he survived Dylan Hunt would come out of it altered, of that Jonah Draeger was certain. How and to what extent remained to be seen.

„This ‚business'..." Dylan spat the word out as if it were some filth, „does it by any chance involve those flash-bots Musseveni designed?"

The direct, harsh question threw Draeger out of his musings.

„What? How do you know about the bots?"

Dylan tiredly closed his eyes, sighing, only to re-open them immediately, his look as stern as his voice.

„Never mind about that. What is Beka's business with Musseveni?"

Quickly stepping nearer Jonah Draeger hurriedly moved a small scanner above Dylan's throat.

„Subvocal implants..." he murmured angrily. „I should have known. Well I must say, Hunt, you people are a resourceful little crew..."

Annoyed, Dylan grabbed for Draeger's forearm.

„What – about – Beka?" he asked pointedly.

„And a focused one, too," the Seefran added ironically, brushing away the hand gripping at him. „Well, since you know anyway: yes, it involves the newly designed flash-bots. But Beka is a strong woman, she'll pull through with whatever they agreed upon. Besides: she's the Nietzschean Matriarch, Paul wouldn't risk damaging her permanently. He tested them on you – and me, too. Looks like we both made it."

Surprised he saw the Vedran's features sag in shock. At first he thought it was because of having told him that he had been on flash, but then he noticed some strange expression settling in on the man's face.

„You don't understand," Dylan said shaking his head in despair. „Beka already has a history with flash. She's been an addict for the past five years." His voice was nearly cracking. He cleared his throat. „And her father was an addict for the last ten years of his life and eventually died because of it. With Beka it isn't only the physical addiction; nor is it just the cravings later on. She is emotionally tied to it on so many levels..."

The _Andromeda_'s captain struggled to sit up, but Draeger had no trouble holding him down as he listened to what the man had to tell him.

„She always struggled to control the addiction each time she went on flash. But if the pressure gets high enough she'll overdose sooner or later..." Dylan concluded weakly.

„They all do – sooner or later," Jonah acquiesced matter-of-factly, „but Musseveni will come up with a way to control it. That's what he needs Beka for... I'm sure she's doing well. Look, Hunt, you were out cold, so you don't know it yet, but I promised Beka that I'll help her... and you." His tone though didn't sound that convinced any more.

„Draeger, listen to me: if this is true and you somehow had a change of heart..."

„I know, it's hard to understand, but..."

„Draeger!" Dylan exclaimed, exasperated. „You're right, I don't understand your motives, but frankly I don't care. If you promised to help Beka, that's all right with me. But then you have to listen to me: take her out of here, stop whatever they're doing with her, get all the bots out of her system and prevent her from taking any of them again. If she goes on with this, she won't be able to control it, no matter what Musseveni might or might not come up with. Please!" he begged in a miserable voice, supporting himself on his elbows.

Jonah Draeger mustered him thoughtfully. The man was deadly serious, his eyes hanging on the Seefran's face as if he were to receive from him absolution. He slowly nodded:

„I'll try. But you..."

„Never mind about me. Just take Beka and leave. I sent word to the _Andromeda_. They must be somewhere nearby. Just go!"

"She'll never agree to leaving without you..."

"Don't worry about it. I can take care of that as soon as she comes to see me."

„I'll see what I can do."

„Good." Dylan let out a deep breath and let himself sink back on his pillows. „Good," he murmured once more, his voice almost shaking as he watched the other man leave.


	31. Chapter 30

Thanks for the reviews. I really appreaciate it.

And many, many thanks to _squid109_ for his wonderful beta-work.**  
**

**Chapter 30**

Draeger reached the heavily guarded doors of the hospital's laboratories in a matter of minutes.

„Paul Musseveni..." he abruptly addressed one of the four guards who were blocking the entrance to the corridors behind them. „He's still in, right?"

The highest ranking soldier stepped forward and nodded:

„He arrived about twenty hours ago with Our Lady, my lord. They've been in there ever since."

„What? They didn't come out for a break?"

„For all I know the Master has ordered three apartments to be arranged within the restricted area. And food has been delivered three times already since they came," the officer informed him eagerly.

Jonah Draeger bit his lip thoughtfully. This made matters much more complicated than he had expected, but there was nothing he could about it.

„Very well," he nodded. „Do I have clearance to pass? I need to see the Master."

„Of course." With a nod of his head the Nietzschean ordered the other guards to open the door.

-

Draeger found Musseveni as he was opening the doors to the vast hall containing all the test-devices that they set up – including a huge flight-simulator, an enormous VR-platform for a multitude of combat situations as well as various cubicles meant to facilitate monitoring.

„Paul," Jonah curtly greeted the old man. „I hear you've been in here for quite some time..."

„Yes, but we're through now. Have you come to bring Beka back to her house for some rest?"

„That – and to tell you that Hunt is doing better, although the people I set on going through the data we obtain from him are still suffering from an information overload..."

Musseveni chuckled softly.

„That I can imagine..."

They reached a cubicle with a biobed. A tired, pale Rebekkah Valentine was sitting on the edge, patiently waiting for the two technicians who were busy detaching various electrodes from her to complete their task.

„Rebekkah, my love, thank you!" Jonah exclaimed exuberantly. „You've been more than cooperative, really! Look who's here to see you..."

She didn't react immediately, her head bowed towards her chest, sweat matted hair hiding her face. But when she slowly raised her head and turned it to the entrance of the cubicle, Draeger almost gasped in shock: her eyes were nearly opaque, with just a tiny ring of blue visible around the pupils, the rest of them engulfed by a sickly looking film of grey, and they were sunk deeply under her brows. There were sharp lines leading from her nose to the corners of her mouth, that looked dry and thin – and her face and neck were covered by a layer of perspiration that seemed both greasy and cold. The skin underneath the sweat displayed a ghostly, white-blueish color, as if it weren't enough oxygenated.

„For God's sake, Paul, what have you done to her?" the Seefran heard himself utter angrily, involuntarily advancing towards Beka. „Why did you have to push her that far?"

Musseveni's cool gaze flickered showing a hint of amusement.

„Because I can," he answered calmly. Draeger stopped and watched him, not at all amused. The older man shrugged his shoulders indifferently, his hands buried deeply in his pockets. „That is the whole point of it. There is only so much I can test on Beka while flying; after all I have to come out alive and in one piece to be able to use the results. Here there is no danger at all in trying out whatever I deem fit."

„You mean no danger for you..."

„Actually I thought no danger for **us**," Musseveni stressed. „What's the matter, Jonah? Feeling nostalgic? Resetting your priorities? Or did you simply find out that cold served revenge might not be a dish you can stomach after all?" he asked almost whispering, standing as close as possible to the Seefran. The younger man watched him unfazed.

„It never was about revenge. It was about rebuilding an empire that I felt to have been rightly mine and that she and Hunt had taken away from me. They are assets, Paul, and by driving them so hard you are endangering them. So far this whole affair has cost more than expected – and in spite of all your reassurances the Commonwealth stays firm, the Dragans aren't really nearly as strong as we might need them and – Beka set aside - your fabulous ‚new race' seems utterly incapable of truly controlling these amazing new nanobots of yours. I am hoping to find Tabea fairing better, but frankly – considering your performances so far – I have my doubts." Draeger's tone was cold and calm and distant, yet he made no attempt to hide his disappointment. „It is your expertise, your clout that's at stake, Paul, but so far all of what's been wasted in this partnership of ours has been **my **money ."

Musseveni stepped back and bowed slightly ironically.

„I never said it wasn't. And all I'm doing now," he reassured his partner, his hands gesticulating appeasingly, „is hurrying things a bit up."

„Just as long as you don't hurry her to death. We need her," Jonah concluded the conversation by stepping closer to the bed and helping Beka down, supporting her elbow with his hand. She looked up, at first having some trouble focusing in on him, but then she recognized him.

„Jonah..." Her voice sounded raspy, as if she hadn't used it in a long, long time.

„Hello, Beka. Paul told me that you're finished here. And that you did a great job..." he gently told her.

She laughed and swayed a little. Reaching up to brush a strand of hair away, she noticed her hand shaking and started to laugh harder.

„Imagine flying like that..." she said, suddenly sagging against the man beside her, who quickly grabbed her arms in an attempt to steady her.

„Come on, Beka, let's go," Jonah urged her softly, „I think you need some rest."

„Who? Me? No... No! No way... I don't need rest. I feel great. Do you hear me? Maybe some coffee and a bite or two to eat..." Her voice sounded uncertain and almost an octave higher than usual. „Listen, Jonah..." she then continued vaguely, letting him lead her out and into the corridor, „I meant to ask you something..."

„Hm?"

„I'd like to know..." She giggled. „What I want to know is..." A deep frown on her forehead Beka stopped and looked up at him. „Can you think of something? Do you know what I mean?"

„No, I have no idea," Draeger sighed wearily, a troubled look passing over his face as he gazed down at her. „Beka, get a grip, Paul is still observing us from the door," he hissed at her softly.

Throwing an uncertain look over her shoulder nearly set the woman off balance. Had the Seefran not had his arm supporting her, she would have fallen. She laughed again.

„Oh, right," she slurred, leaning against him. And then she shut up, letting him take her out of the restricted area. They had almost reached the entrance hall of the hospital, when she suddenly stopped again.

„Wait, now I remember what I meant to ask you!"

The tall man blew his cheek up in an annoyed grimace. _It would have been too easy,_ he thought turning towards her.

„How is... how is...? What was his name again? Dylan! Right. How's Dylan?" Beka said, her index pointing against Draeger's chest and tapping against it with each word. He grabbed her arms and forced them down to her side.

„He's better."

„I want to see him."

„Beka, I think he's sleeping now."

She turned away from the entrance, not listening to him.

„I don't care. I go see him." And then she simply walked away, still a bit unsteady, but clearly determined to have it her way. She hadn't gotten far before he joined her side. A look on her drawn face told him that a debate on this would provoke a scene and that was about the last thing he wanted. So he held his tongue and followed.

-

As Beka Valentine's steps grew steadier, her pace became more hurried. She ran through the corridors without even so much as looking left and right, her breath coming in short gasps, oblivious of Draeger, who followed on her heels. Without sparing a look, let alone a greeting for the guards in front of his doors, she stormed Dylan's room and came to a halt directly before of his bed. It was empty.

„Dylan?" Beka asked voicelessly, her white eyes growing wide. Frantically turning around she searched the room for him, until her gaze finally settled on Draeger entering the room behind her.

„Jonah, where is Dylan?" she whispered almost hysterically.

It was only then that they noticed a small door on the left side of the room slowly opening. Dylan Hunt emerged from it, gingerly moving forward, his head bowed and his hands clumsily nestling with some cord meant to keep a baggy pair of hospital pants in place around his waist while getting the t-shirt he was wearing out of his way.

„Dylan!"

At the sound of Beka's relieved cry he lifted his head. „Beka!" His voice sounded firm and there was a smile slowly starting to spread on his face, a smile that that quickly died as he took in her appearance. He took a small step back and leaned heavily against the door frame.

She had meant to go to him, but the distant expression on his face made her stay where she was.

„You... you're up!" she ventured, her smile a little unsure.

„Yeah. I'm up," Dylan confirmed dryly. „And you're on flash," he added, his voice sharp and cold. It was not a question.

Beka watched him intensely. He looked better, maybe a little leaner than usual, his face a little longer. But there was some color on his cheeks and his eyes seemed clear and bright – and icy.

„Dylan, no, I'm not..." Her voice caught in her throat as she quailed under his unwavering gaze. For a moment not a single muscle moved on his face. But then his mouth twisted just a little, changing his expression into something she'd never seen before – not while he was looking at her, anyway. Contempt, disgust, aversion. And then he looked away, left the door frame and slowly made his way across the room and to his bed.

„Don't bother lying, Captain Valentine," he said, sitting down and swinging his legs on the bed. „I can smell it, you know..."

Upon hearing his voice devoid of all emotion, Beka felt a rush of anger and fear taking over. She briefly closed her eyes. _Oh God, he sounds like Tyr. This isn't you, you're not like that, Dylan, please..._ she wanted to cry out.

„Just a couple of days among Dragans and we already have enhanced senses? My, my..." she heard herself hissing out instead.

His blue eyes met hers, the expression in them colder than glacier ice.

„No need for enhanced senses, Captain; you're sweating like a horse. And then this pretty shade of grey your eyes are showing..." The irony was biting, hitting her like a punch.

„You don't understand..." she stammered helplessly.

„No, of course not. Because, see: that's the way I am. Not understanding. Never. As a friend I asked you, begged you not to do it. And as your captain I even ordered it. But it was too tempting, wasn't it, Captain Valentine? To go on flash with such a convenient excuse at hand... It was too good an offer to refuse."

„Dylan, you don't mean that!"

He laughed humorlessly.

„You've grown too accustomed to me not meaning it. In fact you've grown so accustomed to it that you were counting on it, counting on it that I would reconsider, that I would change my mind, that I would see whatever there is to see from your point of view..."

Dylan's tone remained unchanged, almost emotionless, but Dragger noticed his breathing becoming shorter, agitated..

„Well, not this time, Beka. Go! Get out of here! I don't want to see you anymore. Not. Ever. I'd rather take my chances with Musseveni and all the Dragans he can come up with than go on like this with a pathetic flash addict at my side masquerading as my first officer."

Throughout his tirade Beka had remained silent, but now she fired back:

„You bastard! You petty, backbone-lacking son of a bitch, you... sorry excuse for...! You... you were writhing on that bed, crying out for me to help you... I should have left you... to die... I should have..." Her voice finally failed her completely. Panting and watching him through eyes blurred by tears Beka stood there for a moment, waiting for Dylan's reaction. But none ever came. He was just lay there, looking at her disdainfully, his face a chiseled, impassive mask of coldness.

„Get. Out," he repeated.

Nearly doubling over as if hit in the stomach Beka swayed for a moment, but then she straightened herself up, suddenly calm.. Her head jerked up a little as a jolt of energy seemed to rush through her. As if he had been waiting for that exact reaction, Dylan raised himself on his elbows, looking at her wide-eyed. Another tremor passed through her face, her jaws clenching together while the cords of her neck were tensing.

„Beka, what's wrong?" Intrigued, Jonah Draeger stepped closer to the woman and peered into her face.

„She's triggering the bots - and will probably be overdosing. Quick! Can you sedate her with something?" Dylan's voice sounded urgent. Not losing any time Jonah reached for his pocket and pulled out an injector, that he pressed against Beka's neck. There was but a soft hiss and the woman collapsed, her limp body hitting the floor before the Seefran could catch her. Dumbfounded by what he had just witnessed, Draeger stared incredulously at the pilot at his feet.

„Why did she do it?" he finally asked hoarsely.

„Because she is exhausted and because I pushed her too far... That's what addicts do," Dylan responded. Incredulously Jonah raised his eyes to him.

„So then why did you do it? She agreed to this deal for you..."

„I'm touched," the _Andromeda_'s captain said matter-of-factly. „Now, I doubt that this sedation will not last forever. Pick her up," he ordered. „Even if she wakes up now, she'll leave with you provided you take her to the _Maru_."

Draeger looked at the man on the bed as if he thought him out of his mind. But then he slowly nodded, bending over and picking Beka up in his arms.

„Good luck!" Dylan told him, his voice still inflexible.

Cradling the blonde pilot closely to his chest Jonah Draeger opened his mouth to answer. But before he could do so the High Guard officer raised a hand as if to fend him off.

„Spare me any comment you might have, Mr. Draeger. Just take her out of here and make sure she sobers up. The _Maru _is well equipped to wash the flash out of her system. We made sure of that after the first time this happened. I have no idea how you'll get rid of all the bots that haven't been triggered yet, but I'm sure you'll come up with something."

„Captain Hunt, I still think..."

„Mr. Draeger, I am utterly uninterested in what you think. Fact is that you don't know me at all – and just because you screwed her for a month that doesn't make you an expert on Captain Valentine either. So what you might or might not think is of no importance whatsoever. Go." His tone final, the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ let himself sink back on the bed and slowly closed his eyes.

For one more instant Jonah Draeger stood there, Rebekkah Valentine in his arms. And then he turned and left unaware of the thin lines of wetness sliding from under Hunt's closed eyelids.


	32. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

With Tabea safely on her way back to Myrmidon, Raphael Valentine returned to his task at hand, patiently going through the _Maru_'s and his sister's personal log files under Rommie's watchful – and slightly disconcerting – gaze.

There were many details on Beka's life on Seefra he hadn't been aware of, and some of them – like her farewell to Dylan and, even more so her adventure recovering the Methos plate – had shaken him badly.

This guy had looked exactly the way Ignatius would have turned out, had he lived that long. Rafe almost ached for Beka's loss, for his father's wasted life, for not having been there to comfort his sister this second time around that she had to go through letting go of her idealized father figure.

As he went on and on through the data, Raphael couldn't refrain from shaking his head. All this struggle, the grief Beka had accumulated was a bit beyond him: his aptitude for sorrow was more or less underdeveloped, silenced long ago by years of denial, numbness and his inherited penchant for self-preservation, that enabled him to push aside all unpleasant thoughts, all bad experience and simply concentrate on relishing the present.

In this respect he was quite different from Beka: he always knew that there was only so much his sister could force herself to ignore, to overlook, to avoid admitting, while with him – well, there really were no limits to the amount of trouble Rafe Valentine could refuse to acknowledge, if he chose to do so. Which he mostly did. And watching the endless parade of people in general and particularly of men Beka had used, misused and let herself be used by... Raphael couldn't help congratulating himself on his take on life.

Sitting next to him, intensely watching his face, Rommie smiled a sad little smile, watching the quick changes of mood playing across Rafe's face, seeing him plunge more and more into something quite similar to a ‚big brother'-mode – almost in spite of himself.

„Those guys," she suddenly heard herself say, „they were just a pass-time, you know..."

„Obviously," Valentine replied rather dryly. „Why didn't Rhade, Dylan or Harper step in? Or you, Trance..." His voice trailed off towards vagueness...

„They did," Rommie replied, „later. But, you see, on Seefra they all had their hands full – with me, with coming to terms with what had happened to them. Rhade was... shattered, Harper almost buried in feelings of guilt, loss and sorrow," she heard herself defending her crew-mates. „Trance didn't really remember anything clearly and Doyle... Well, Doyle was much too new among us to really be able to help. I was out of... order," she quickly threw in, as if wanting to prevent him from blaming this on her. „We couldn't help ourselves, much less face Beka. It took us a while – and truth be told, she was better in handling the whole situation than anyone of us."

„And Dylan?"

„Dylan..." Rommie sighed. „Dylan was... trapped... in his own personal nightmare - all alone in an unknown universe that was out to get him, utterly incapable to do what he thinks himself to be meant to do: defend, protect and fight the battles others can't." The avatar shrugged helplessly upon noticing Rafe rolling his eyes at this before returning his attention to the monitor in front of him. „In the end," she then continued slowly, „he simply embraced denial: he found them one by one and stubbornly refused to accept that they were no longer his friends, no longer his crew, that I was no longer his ship, that we all had become strangers to each other. Amazingly enough, it proved to be the right strategy, but it did take him – and us – an awful lot of time. And it cost him dearly."

„He should have done more..."

„He did, finally. He was there to protect her, whenever it was necessary, but your, Beka's and his conception of ‚necessary' might differ," Rommie admitted, sighing again. „However: when Peter showed up..."

„Peter?" Rafe frowned. Another unknown name.

Rommie looked at him weighingly.

„Do you know about Beka's connection with the Nietzscheans?"

„She likes them," Raphael shrugged indifferently.

„Not really. But she understands them pretty well. And she feels responsible..."

„What, because she likes them?" Rafe inquired, looking more puzzled than ever. „If everyone in this universe was to be blamed for his lack of good taste..."

„She feels responsible because she... generated them."

„Come again?"

„This guy she met on Seefra: Peter... He turned out as another one of those who could travel back and forth through the Route of Ages. For all we know he was none other but Drago Musseveni, the progenitor of the Nietzschean race. He stole your sister's DNA for his experiments. Your sister, Mr. Valentine, is the Matriarch of all Nietzschean prides."

Raphael Valentine, who had stood mouth agape through Rommie's explanations, now let himself just fall on the closest chair. Still staring at her, he swallowed convulsively.

„I... I think I'm gonna be sick..." he mumbled lowly.

„Yes," Rommie nodded, „that seems to be the usual reaction to this special bit of information."

The man's eyes were wandering aimlessly about the room, unable to focus on something until they finally returned to the avatar's face, his gaze literally sucking itself to it.

„Does that make me... the Alpha uncle of the Nietzschean race?"

Rommie almost chuckled. Trust Rafe to never lose his place in a scheme from sight, no matter how great the shock. Amused, the android nodded lightly.

„Imagine the possibilities..." she teased, nearly laughing out loud upon seeing his eyes light up at the thought. „Look, I know it's somewhat of a surprise, but I think we should return to the task at hand."

Rafe sobered up instantly.„Are there any recordings on this Peter-guy?"

Rommie called up the data. Focusing on the monitor in front of her, she missed the stupefied expression on Rafe's face as soon as he hus first glimpse of Peter, the way his face was suddenly drained of all colour. When the recordings ended, she turned again to face him.

„That's about all of them."

Rafe didn't answer her, still staring wide-eyed at the now blank screen.

„Rafe?" Rommie gently inquired. When he didn't respond she carefully placed a hand on his shoulder.

„Rafe, is anything wrong?"

Shaking his head he slowly seemed to get out of his stupor.

„This..." he vaguely gestured towards the now dark monitor, „this is Peter? Drago?"

Rommie merely nodded.

„Well, he's not!" Beka's brother exploded in cold fury. „This is my dad's other companion, his good old pal Paul Montrose, who after a particularly profitable job just took all the money from my father and Sid, making a graceful exit..."

-

She didn't wait for them all to show up at the conference she had scheduled ASAP. Instead she had preferred to inform them both personally about the information Rafe had just provided on Peter.

Not that gathering her remaining senior crew posed any difficulty: it almost pained Rommie to see just the four of them seated around the long glass table in the briefing room. _So many of us missing_, she reflected sadly.

Those still left looked stunned, still trying to digest the fact that Beka's nearly fatal love-interest had been her father's untrustworthy partner. Rafe's face had never lost the half surprised, half outraged expression it had adopted right after his discovery. Rhade sat there with clenched jaws in a disgusted silence, while Harper simply looked baffled. The only one still showing something remotely resembling some kind of countenance was Rommie. Beneath the calm facade though she was febrily trying to connect all information she now possessed on Peter; if androids had something similar to instinct, then this was what she was experiencing right now: a gut feeling that somehow putting the puzzle of Peter together was vital for finding a solution to the current predicament they were in.

„A family feud?" Harper scanted. „Oh, that's just perfect, really! What is this? Frikkin' Hamlet? Never mind, it's an Earth-thing, by and large referred to as ‚education', boys" he added upon seeing the others' inquiring gaze. „Rommie, any ideas how this could have happened?"

„He called himself a Routist, said he'd stolen the tech from very sloppy Vedrans..." Rhade said with a shrug, before Rommie could answer. „If he did time travel once to get to Seefra, why not do it more often? We know the Route of Ages was not a one-destination highway."

„Sloppy Vedrans?" Rafe echoed the Nietzschean. „How likely is that?"

„Very, I'm afraid," Harper commented dryly. „So far – for all their supposed advanced tech being close to magic – we haven't seen one single thing that they did right... Everything is broken, running out of power and/or poorly executed," he concluded in a bitter voice. „Why should the way they secured their tech be any different?..."

„Not **everything **is broken," Rommie remarked sounding slightly offended.

Realizing his gaffe, Harper shrugged apologetically,."Present company excluded, of course, Romdoll."

„Still, you do have a point," the avatar nodded a bit distressed. „They were getting careless over the last millennia or so..."

During his time on Seefra Telemachus Rhade, never the most patient of men, had lost what little patience he had to begin with. Listening to his crew-mates muse about long past Vedran failures was testing his abilities on this matter far beyond their limits.

„As fascinating as all of this may be," Terrazed's governor suddenly jumped into the conversation, his tone clearly indicating that the word he would have thought to be more appropriate would have been ‚despicable', „what relevance does it have for the problem at hand?"

„I don't know," Rommie admitted quietly, an unspoken ‚yet' lingering in the air.

„Somehow this whole affair seems linked to both Seefra and the Nietzscheans," Harper rushed in to her rescue.

„With Beka as an ‚anchoring point'," Rafe added quickly. „All of those strange figures and names popping out of her past..." His voice trailed off, his face suddenly becoming distant as his eyes lost their focus.

Noticing the man's reaction, Rhade glared at him, somewhat puzzled himself.

„Rafe?"

„Rafe? Hey! Rafe, buddy, you still with us?" Harper also asked, bending forward and clasping the older man's shoulder. „Rafe?" he repeated once more.

Beka's brother didn't respond immediately, but then his jaw dropped slowly, „'Out of Thalia by Paul'... Musseveni?" he uttered in a strained voice.

There was a violent noise as Rhade's chair fell back while the sturdy man jumped out of it as if bitten by a particularly nasty beast.

„'Thalia'? As in your mother? The senator?" the Nietzschean spurted out incredulously, his voice getting louder with each question. „And Peter... Not Drago, but Paul Musseveni? You have **got **to be kidding!"

"My mother... She left shortly, only two months or so after Paul had ran taking the money..."

Rhade snorted loudly.

"The whole Nietzschean race! The offspring of a crook with a talent for genetics and a coldly calculating bitch with a disregard for family? Well, this is just perfect! Really, you **must **be kidding!" And with that he stormed out of the room, his face a mask of disgust.

Pushing himself up heavily, Raphael Valentine, looking aged 10 years, turned around to leave, as well.

„I wish I were," he mumbled before reaching the doors, more stumbling rather than walking out of there himself.

„Thalia is Beka's and Rafe's mother? Holy shit!" Harper exclaimed into the sudden silence. „That's no Shakespeare, this is some goddamn' Greek tragedy!"

„And not one of the most tasteful," Rommie commented analytically. „Any striking ideas, Captain?" she then inquired politely.

The young man shook his head.

„I just wish we could have told Doyle."

„Don't worry. She'll get by even without this particular piece of information," Rommie reassured him. „She's a clever girl!"

„I know, Romdoll, I know. Let's hope that's enough."**  
**


	33. Chapter 32

_**Squid109**, many, many thanks for your help with the beta._

**Chapter 32**

Thanks to its two suns days on Myrmidon were dry and hot, but the drop in temperature after sunset seemed to make the planet sweat off the heat of daylight and the nights were rather cool, with a clammy feeling to them and quite often foggy. It was one of those fogbound nights that the _Andromeda_'s slipfighter carrying Tabea, out of Thalia by Paul Musseveni, and her booty was cleared for landing at one of the largest space-ports of Thetis, Myrmidon's capital. It happened also to be the closest one to the largest, best equipped medical and research center in the entire system, the one that Paul Musseveni had chosen to harbor his vast laboratories.

The place was buzzing with activity, security teams standing by to escort the young woman to her waiting father, and the fighter she brought with her to the awaiting sealed-off area, where the codes securing the slender cylinder were to be cracked. The stir was over as soon as both the redhead and the device had left the locale, and the calmness and silence enveloping the area deemed strange and ominous after all the commotion. The night was in fact so very, very quiet that the lowly hissing sound made by the cockpit hatch of the slipfighter opening up seemed almost deafening in comparison to the stillness all around it. A figure climbed out of it and jumped down to the ground, moving soundlessly and with almost unnatural ease.

It took Doyle only an instant to get orientated. The Seefran avatar took in her surroundings in her typical deliberate manner, keeping herself close to the scanty cover provided by the slipfighter while doing so. For a moment she congratulated herself on her android nature: she had spent the twelve hours needed by Tabea to reach Myrmidon after her flight from the _Andromeda _in a light metal case, that they had placed behind the pilot seat of the tiny space-craft. A living body would not have made it undiscovered and without succumbing to cramps.

It had been Rhade's idea to prepare a slipfighter by removing the backseat and building in metal compartments that looked as if designed for small cargo. They had counted upon Tabea not being familiar with High Guard slipfighter design – and to her being unwilling to let whatever she was after out of her sight, once she had it. It had been a bit of a gamble but in the end it turned out that they had placed their bets right.

-

When Harper had come up with the plan to let Tabea achieve her goal and escape from the _Andromeda _in the prepared fighter with a spy onboard, there had been a lot of skepticism from Rhade. He had assumed he would be the one assigned to this mission – and his Nietzschean instincts didn't like the odds. It had surprised all when Doyle had volunteered. As much as she was part of their team and a trusted friend for all (and – some suspected – for Harper even a beloved one), as much as they were sure of her affection for each one of them (and her devotion for Harper): Doyle was still the newest member to join the party, at first adopting their fight only because Harper 's inserting Rommie's core memories into her had forced her to do so. And once they were gone, once she had restored them back to Rommie, she chose to stay if not so much for herself as for Harper. With Rommie's memories in with their rightful owner Doyle went back to being what her original programming had intended her to be: a simple girl from Seefra. A beautiful, charming, intelligent, impossibly skilled and strong girl, but basically normal. As normal as a striking beauty that could bend steel and master the most complicated intellectual challenges within seconds could be.

To some degree the blonde avatar was even more of a masterpiece than Rommie's android body: the range of feelings Harper had endowed her with were more than just complicated equations resulting into perfect simulations that could in time develop to real emotionality. They **were **emotions, spirit – right from the very start. The independence Doyle enjoyed in comparison to other avatars, who remained tied to their ships' bodies, added to that process.  
Aside from the perfect and inhumanly apt physicality, Doyle was as much of a sentient being as something not born but built could get.

Accordingly she was much more her own person than any other avatar before: she was part of the High Guard, because she had decided it would be best to do so, she stayed attached to the CW, its fleet and the _Andromeda Ascendant_ not because she had to, but because she had convinced herself that it would benefit all to do so. She loved her former crew-mates not because of being programmed to be loyal to her superior officers, but out of her own free choice. And she cared for Harper more deeply than so far either one of them had dared to admit.

Had anyone, including the two of them, ever stopped to take a closer look, it would have been obvious that Doyle's feelings for the Terran were nothing like the crush _Andromeda_'s avatar had developed in her early days for Dylan. That had been an interesting, yet somewhat pubertal blend of CW loyalty and the typical hero-worship the High Guard required their ships to have for their captains suddenly facing the pure joy of experiencing the new possibilities of a new dimension. Doyle's sentiments for Harper were nothing like that. Nor were they comparable to Rommie's fierce, motherly protectiveness for each one of her crew.

However, there had never been any exploration of the exact nature of Doyle's and Harper's relationship. Once the Abyss and the Worldship had finally been defeated Harper had plunged himself into the task of building the New CW the finest fleet they could dream of, while taking care of the _Andromeda _and pursuing the scientific experiments he had put on hold for so long. Doyle in turn had returned to Seefra, now again Tarn Vedra, gladly accepting the mission of rebuilding the ancient seat of power of the Old Commonwealth and restore it to its former glory.

The Restored New Systems' Commonwealth had originally offered this job to Dylan, but he had declined. He had at first felt it to be somehow his duty to at least try, but after only a month he had given up: as happy as he was about Tarn Vedra returning to the Known Worlds, this was no longer his home. Each step, each turn he took on the planet reminded him of what was lost to him for good, no matter how fast and well the rebuilding went: his family, his friends, Sarah, the normal life that he once had expected to be his one day. He had asked for transfer and recommended Doyle instead for the position. She accepted gladly. It was her home, she loved it like Beka loved the _Maru_, Rhade Terrazed, like Harper and Dylan loved their memories of their past.

It was a good life, shadowed only by the fact that she didn't get to see her friends – Harper – as often as she would have liked it. But they stayed in touch – and it didn't surprise anyone to see Doyle rushing to them as soon as she had been informed on the situation. But her volunteering to sneak in on Tabea, on what could easily turn out to be a suicide mission – that did surprise a bit; and filled Harper with an apprehension he hadn't felt since his first days alone on Seefra. In the end he had agreed to let her do it: if anyone had a chance of getting in, gathering as much information as possible and make it out of there again, that person was Doyle, especially since she had more tools at her disposal than even the _Andromeda_'s avatar. Due to her more militaristic nature there were certain limits to Rommie's social skills: she was beautiful, awesome, could be warm and friendly and sometimes even hot, but charming and sexy were harder for her to achieve. Doyle was more civilian, casual, easy-going – and could, if need be, flirt her way out of hell. And so Harper had accepted her offer. But it didn't really sit well with him.

He was allowing Doyle to risk her neck for Beka and for Dylan. Which meant that she took chances for two people that she considered to be her friends, but to whom she had never really grown all that close. From the very start she had understood, respected and liked Dylan, supporting him all the way. But when he had asked her to fight with him to the end, to face death for him and for his causes, she had refused and made it clear that her attachment to him, strong as it might have been, was not **that **strong.

With Beka things were more complicated: the tiny part of Doyle that was and always would remain _Andromeda_, had inherited the vague memories of Rommie's strange antipathy and elaborately veiled jealousy from their first years together. For a rather long time the ship had not trusted her own first officer with herself and least of all with her captain. It had taken Beka years and countless proofs of loyalty and friendship to break through those defenses, it had required her to almost become someone new and quite different from the reckless pirate that had initialy joined Dylan's cause. This new person had however receded during her early time of Seefra, the pirate resurfacing and taking control with a vengance. The part of Doyle that was _Andromeda _recognized it, saw how it affected the others, how much it scared Harper, who had never seen this side of Beka directed at him, how it puzzled Trance and deeply hurt Dylan. The relationship she built up with Beka was therefore rather strained, at best.

It had improved with time, with Beka changing back to someone more like her newer old self, but it had never reached the trust and friendship Rommie had come to have for her first officer, the deep attachment Harper felt for her, nor could Doyle even grasp the complicated patterns of the ties that seemed to bind the captain and his XO. If anything, Doyle's attitude towards Beka resembled Rhade's: a mixture of intrigued friendship, awe for her abilities... and some other feeling that could best be described as cautiously being prepared to expect anything from her – good and bad alike. And although she wasn't as bothered by it as Rhade occasionally seemed to be, nor as watchful and alert as Rommie always was when it came to observing and stabilizing the ever fragile balance between Beka and Dylan: Doyle could relate to both Rhade's and _Andromeda_'s impression that their intricate relationship was at times weakening them both, although it had – strangely enough – so far been rather beneficial in their mutual fights. Provided, of course, that they fought on the **same **side.

In the end it had been this reasoning that had prompted Doyle to volunteer: as the avatar of the CW's flag ship Rommie was too important to risk. And both Harper and Rhade, aside from their physical limitations, could have well found that they had bitten off more than they could chew, as no-one really knew what Tabea was up to. And both were, in Doyle's view, too emotionally involved with Beka to deal with the situation. As emotionally gifted as she knew herself to be, she **was **an android. Her memories of a cold, sarcastic Captain Valentine not on their side, indifferent, not even friendly were more distant, but just as fresh as the ones of the committed, loyal, passionate, caring Beka. If what she discovered pointed to the fact that Beka was no longer one of them, Doyle knew that she would be better suited than either Harper or Rhade to deal with the situation, permanently. That had been her main reason to offer her assistance.

-

Swiftly making her way from the spacecraft, Doyle scanned the surroundings, noting the presence of guards posted regularly at some distance around the rather vast area harboring it. She rolled her eyes in annoyance about Nietzschean paranoia, the pretty face acquiring a very characteristic, highly human little pout, that disappeared however as soon as she spotted the square, ungracious silhouette of the _Eureka Maru _through the fog. A satisfied little chuckle escaped her lips upon recognizing the ship and locating it inside the circle formed by the posts. Trusting in the fog to hide her, Doyle approached the vessel with silent, quick steps, carefully ensuring that no-one was near it, before she reached the entrance and tapped in a code on the access keypad. The airlock doors slid open with a soft hiss, allowing her entry into the vessel.

The ship looked the same as always. As she proceeded through the small bar and towards the cockpit the blonde android failed to detect anything amiss. When she reached the cockpit, Doyle threw herself behind the navigation console on the right side of the door, shooting a quick glance around the cockpit. And there she finally spotted something strange: attached to the rail right in front of her there were chains attached, and the usually immaculate deck and bulkhead in their vicinity bore dried, darkened spots of blood.

"Kinky!" the avatar exclaimed, her voice sounding half amused, half worried. "Now if the one away with the _Maru _had been Harper..." she continued whispering to herself, while she approached the rail, kneeling down beside it. Holding out her hand she ran a quick scan of the blood, and her impassive expression quickly gave way to worry.

"Oh, Dylan!" the blonde sighed, fighting off the urge to allow the feeling of panic she felt well up within her to mount. The DNA-scan left no doubt that it had been Dylan, who had been imjured here. And Beka? Further investigations of the area however showed no sign of her. Rising to her feet, Doyle stood there for a second, motionlessly contemplating the fog outside the window and biting her lower lip. Abruptly she turned on her heel, and began a thorough search of the entire ship. The condition of the captain's quarters with bloody sheets disposed of in the laundry, the bed ravaged, IV-hooks, medical monitors and injectors all over the place, was anything but reassuring. But while what she had discovered so far deeply worried her, what she found in medical terrified her..The horror cabinet displaying the dreadful sight of the exposed embryos was bad enough, but when she accessed the available logs showing the rapid mutations taking place in the examined samples, that were identified as belonging to Captain Dylan Hunt, she became weak at the knees.

_Beka, Dylan, where are you? What, by all the Commonwealth's planets, did they do you? _she thought frantically.And then she found the endless reports on Beka's tests, taken while she was on flash during the previous flights to Ral Parthia.

She truly was Harper's most ambitious creation: letting herself slide down along the bulk-head, she sat down on the deck and buried her face in her hands. She had volunteered because she thought herself more capable to handle the situation no matter what information she uncovered. Now she wasn't so sure. She felt herself assailed by sorrow, fury, compassion, fear and outrage. Who had done this to them? Why? For how long? And, most importantly: had they survived the ordeal?

Swallowing down the clump that she felt in her throat (and maybe for the first time cursing Harper's genius), she brushed away the tears from her cheeks and arose. Without another look at the disgusting sights around her, Doyle turned and walked out of the room and hurried to Command.


	34. Chapter 33

**Gambit 33**

Sitting in the cockpit of the _Eureka Maru_, Doyle was deep in thought about what course to take. Like Rommie she was able to scan her immediate surroundings, but for long-range scans she needed the the _Maru_'s scanners .And for that she would have to power up the ship, something she was certain it would attract attention which was the last thing she needed right now. Still in order to search for Beka's and Dylan's whereabouts as quickly as possible long-range scans were necessary. If she were to use more surreptitious methods it would take her much more time to find out what had happened to them and whether or not they were even in Thetis. And if there was one thing Doyle needed even less than drawing attention to her and the _Maru_, it was getting back to Harper and telling him that Beka and Dylan were lost to them, to him.

When the crew of the _Andromeda _had finally been gathered together on Seefra, Doyle had at first perceived them all as nuisances, new figures disturbing the life she had with Harper. But as each one of them introduced new sides of Harper to her, sides she previously never knew existed, her feelings changed.

There suddenly was a Harper whom a Nietzschean treated as an equal, a friend, at times a fellow warrior. And occasionally even like a threat to be taken seriously.

A Harper who was perceived by the avatar of a sun to be some sort of wizard, the famous elder brother figure, who could fix everything, make everything better. Trance used to go to Dylan, when she needed protection, but she looked for Harper, when she wanted answers. The only time Doyle had seen her angry with Dylan had been during the first weeks after Trance's sun had come through the Route of Ages. She had pleaded with them to follow of Harper's suggestions, which they did, sometimes quickly, sometimes more reluctantly. When Dylan had tried to tell Trance that even Harper doubted that he could fix the artificial suns and stop her star the look Trance had thrown him had been one of outraged puzzlement, before she had burst out:

_„Dylan, what are you talking about? How can you say such things? Of course he can. Harper can fix **everything**!"_

And Doyle met a Harper who held on to his dream to restore both _Andromeda _and Rommie, no matter how painful and long and winding the road back to what had been lost turned out to be. For a time she had not known how to define his struggle for the ship's and her avatar's existence. She didn't understand why he could not see that it would have been more merciful to just let go, allow Rommie to find her peace. But as she started to familiarize herself with _Andromeda_'s and Harper's history together, Doyle realized that to ask this of him would have been like asking a father to stand by and watch his child die before her time, before the remotest, most far-fetched chances to save her had all been explored. It would have been unnatural to ask him to accept this. It was the course of life for children to survive their parents, as it was for parents to ensure that this was the way it happened.

It had taken Doyle almost four years to get to meet this other Harper. And she couldn't even imagine going back to him, telling him that after losing his childhood, his family, his friends and in the end his entire home planet, he would now have to resign himself to now having lost Beka as well. Beka whom he not only loved but literally worshiped, with a devotion that was all the more touching as he had no illusions about all her flaws. She was his best friend, his safe harbor, his confidante, the only true home he had left. At some point in his life Harper had decided that Beka would be the rock he would build his life on. And nothing she had done since, none of the things she had submitted them all, herself and Harper to had changed that devotion.

Nor could she see herself telling him that from now on he would have to do without Dylan. For a while after Earth's destruction Dylan had been the only one Harper could turn to, when he needed comfort. Because in the end none of the others understood what the Terran had gone through, exactly how enormous his loss really was. None of them but Dylan, who had the advantage (if one could call it that) to not need understanding. Dylan simply knew. Over the last year the two men had grown closer than they had ever been before. The more so as the new bond had finally enabled Dylan to show the ever present extent of his trust in his engineer's abilities and had enabled Harper to notice it. The Earther had to some degree always been able to see past the imposing figure the captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ presented to the others. Still, in spite of being well aware of the man behind the image and all of his shortcomings, not even Harper had ever been totally immune to Dylan's well-trained charisma. And it meant the world to know he was liked, admired and trusted by a living legend. It was a need with Harper, going well beyond vanity and silencing many inbred insecurities.

No, she wouldn't make Harper face more irreplaceable losses, not before she tried everything to prevent it. Her determination was spurred on by the fact that she was the only one who actually knew how, **what **Harper was without them – and what he could become. It was an experience she did not care to see repeated. After those three years alone with him on Seefra it had been a struggle to put the pieces back together: out of fractured lives, fractured minds and fractured souls she and Harper had managed to restore a jigsawed picture, ending up with the closest thing they could have to a family. And she would not stand by watching as two of the branches of this tiny new tree of life were cut off before it had a fair chance to grow and prosper.

Shaking her blonde mane and pressing her lips together, Doyle brought the up _Maru _to minimal power. while inserting new security codes into the computer locking the ship to her command only. She quickly performed some wide-range scans, then shut the old freighter down again. She smiled upon receiving the confirmation that there was a subdermal communicator familiar to the _Maru _about 10 kilometers to the west of the ship's location – and slowly coming closer. An infrared scan of the direction of the signal revealed that the owner of the communicator was most likely in the company of another. Still, it was but one familiar signal, and in spite of her taking the time to double-check the results, the _Maru_'s sensors indicated that there were no others responding to the interrogation signal. The signal was moving closer, but there was no way she could find out whose it really was from the distance. Frowning, she quickly left the ship, being careful to avoid detection by the guards. She wasn't overly concerned considering that their detectors were probably meant to alert them on the approach of organics and that the fog had grown quite thick by now.

Her own sensors led her safely between two of the guard posts, as she moved unerringly towards the area where the _Maru _had detected the familiar signal. About 700 m down the way there was a 3 m high, probably electrified fence. Without even breaking her stride Doyle simply leapt over it. For a brief moment she stopped on the other side, scanning her surroundings, then continued moving rapidly in the direction the _Maru _had detected the familiar signal. Minutes later she stopped: the small detector in her wrist indicated that the signal she had been approaching was close, hidden by the fog and by some green bushes that separated the grav-tracks of Thetis' public transportation system leading to the spaceport from the surrounding landscape. A smile of satisfaction came over Doyle's face.

-

He hadn't heard or noticed a thing. He had stopped briefly, gently laying his load on the cold, wet ground, trying to catch his breath and figure out a way to get them through the guard posts and safely aboard the _Maru_.

The guards at Dylan Hunt's door had not even blinked, when Jonah Draeger had carried the woman all Illion system now knew to be the Matriarch of all Nietzscheans out of the room. They were trained not to ask questions when it came to anything Paul Musseveni or Jonah Draeger did. But they had of course noticed. And they would report some couple of hours later, as soon as the next shift came in to relieve them.

Draeger knew it, and he hurried up, intent on taking full advantage of the time window he had at his disposal – and that he suspected to be narrow. The thirty-six hour long days of Myrmidon were – for all activities – divided into six-hour long shifts. The change of the guards had occurred just before he had left with Beka so he estimated he had no more than five hours to get himself and Beka on the _Maru_, sober her up enough so she could pilot and make it out of Illion. They were on an tight schedule.

He left the hospital and managed to get into himself and Beka into his anti-grav transporter which had been docked on the parking lot without any difficulties, and began maneuvering it into the direction of the space port. He didn't like transporting himself anywhere on his own. His whole life he had had the means and opportunity to let himself be taken anyplace he wanted. As a result he was clumsy at the helm of any land-, air- or space-craft known in the Three Galaxies.

It didn't bother him much on Seefra – where technology was in any case limited. And it didn't hinder him much afterwards either: when Paul Musseveni had taken him with him through the Route of Ages, into this new universe. Draeger had put his skills and the connections Paul had provided him with to good use, managing within ten years to establish himself as second in command of the largest corporation in the field of biological, medical and pharmaceutical research. A corporation that had emerged from a long discharged branch of a conglomerate of weapons manufacturing companies, that was still well and prosperous, Technocore. The rise of the New Restored Systems' Commonwealth had necessitated that the conglomerate get rid of a line of business that was heavily involved in the research and production of... ‚strategies' for chemical and biological warfare, something that the Commonwealth Charter clearly denounced as illegal. But there were people left who thought differently. The stigmatization hindered open development, but the non-Commonwealth structures ignoring the interdiction grew rich, in spite of the fierce competition in the field. Richest among them was Biocore and its executive officer, one Johah Draeger.  
It had been a long time since such activities had troubled him morally and it had provided him, even here, in this new universe he still abhorred on so many levels, with an amount of wealth of indecent proportions. And freed him of the need to steer himself anyplace on his own. So far. That was about to change now.

After a bumpy ride at a rather slow pace which he hoped would avoid attention of the traffic corridors' surveillance, they came to halt next to the anti grav tracks leading to the space port, where he hid the small transporter in an anemic grove of trees. He was now crouching next to the tracks about 4 km away from the spaceport's main entrance, trying to figure out a way to get in as inconspicuously as possible.

Draeger could of course have simply walked in there, without anyone asking any questions, but he had told Musseveni that he was taking Beka to her house to rest. They hadn't showed up, and although he doubted that the guard at the house had informed anyone about it, he didn't want to take any chances. His own house wasn't guarded, and so he had left Musseveni a short note at the labs, stating that he was taking Beka to his own mansion, where he had carefully briefed his personnel about that fact that he did not want to be disturbed for at least the next 12 hours. He did this quite often while he was on his way, making sure that his path was clear as soon as he reached the gates: the people working for him knew that he sometimes wanted and expected complete privacy when he was again in ‚one of his moods', as they often put it. But in spite of having covered their tracks as well as could be expected: who could tell what Musseveni was up to, what orders he had issued in the meantime, whether there wouldn't be an overly zealous officer at the spaceport not satisfied with having only Draeger's clearance for all areas and insisting on getting Musseveni's approval, as well... It was far, far better to not take any chances of being seen at all. Draeger knew all the gates, all codes and every tracking and detection system. He could disable them all and get to the _Maru_, but he had to do it quietly and quickly, while still carrying Beka. So he took a little time to plan his next steps. And was thinking. Concentrating. Too much, as it turned out.

-

Next thing he knew there was a steely pressure encircling his neck and effectively cutting off his air supply, while the rest of his torso was immobilized by another arm.He kicked backwards and felt his booted foot make contact, but the kick seemed to have no effect on his assailant. His vision was getting blurred and closing in on the edges, when he heard a whisper, strangely clear and crisp in spite of the fact that he was almost desperately trying to gain some air:

„I will release you now, I don't mean to harm you, but if you so much as make a sound or try to get away before I'm through with you, I will snap your neck like a chicken's. Do you understand me?"

The pressure on his neck eased a bit, enabling him to nod. The arm that was wrapped around his neck was removed. With a gasp he filled his lungs with air, taking in deep breaths and nearly choking on them. He doubled over, resting his hands on his knees, trying to clear his head and his vision, then slowly turned around. He must quite clearly have been without oxygen for longer than he had thought for in front of him, a bit masked by the surrounding fog, was the diminutive silhouette of a woman. The fog cleared slightly to show that she was a delicate blonde beauty alone. There was no eight foot tall, 300 lbs mountain of muscles anywhere in sight.

„Better?" she asked in a pleasant, slightly seductive voice. Draeger nodded dumbfounded. „Good," she said, Pushing him out of the way she knelt down next to Beka, her hands slightly pressing against the woman's chest and forehead. To Drager's consternation, judging by the ease with which she had shoved him aside, the colossus that had choked him had been her.

„She's unconscious – and generally in poor shape. What's wrong with her?" the blonde asked the Seefran curtly.

„She nearly overdosed on flash. I took her out before she could do so. She's heavily sedated."

The small blonde acknowledged his comment with a nod, then rose to her feet in a gracious, fluid move.

„Mr. Draeger, I presume?"

„Yes."

„Before you tell me what you're doing here with Beka: where is Captain Hunt?"

„It's a... it's a long story..."

„No story, just the info. Where?"

„He is at the Grand Asclepion, about six km away from here," Draeger answered readily. The girl's eyes narrowed to small slits.

„That sounds rather clinical," she stated, her voice as dispassionate as before.

„It's a hospital," he told her.

„Why is he there? And why couldn't the _Maru_'s sensors detect his presence?"

„That's part of the longer story."

„Then it will have to wait. Why are you here with Beka?"

„I promised to get her out of here. I promised to... to save her..."

„Oh, really?" The blonde cocked her head to one side, a slight pout on her lips and a look in her eyes that said she was not convinced at all. „From what Raphael Valentine told us your eagerness to help her seems to be a rather newly acquired habit..."

„Again, it's a long story..."

She shrugged.

„Whatever. Do you have transportation?"

„Yeah, in that grove behind you..." She didn't turn to peer through the fog. Instead she motioned him to pick up Beka and stepped aside, her hand waving him forward.

„After you, Mr. Draeger..."

„Where are we going?"

„To the grove..."

„But... why?"

„We're taking that vessel of yours and paying Dylan Hunt a visit."

„What?" Draeger exploded. „Are you out of your mind? Why would you want to do that?"

„Because he's coming with us," the girl replied sweetly, her flat hand gently pushing him from behind.

„No, you don't understand..."

„No, Mr. Draeger, I'm afraid it's you who doesn't understand. My name is Doyle. For almost a year on Seefra I was the avatar of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, sort of. And since the war I've been supervising the restoration process of Tarn Vedra, formerly known as Seefra. Captains Hunt and Valentine are my commanding officers. And my friends. They are both sorely missed and much needed by many. I'm not leaving either one of them behind. Now move. And please remember: like a chicken, Jonah... I may call you Jonah, yes? That's settled then."


	35. Chapter 34

Thanks, everyone, for the reviews and the feedback

_Squid, thank you so much for your help with this._

**Chapter 34**

The air in the vast hall was thick with anticipation. It had taken almost 3 hours for the cryptology department to decypher the codes that secured the slender cylinder Tabea had victoriously delivered into their hands, but they had finally succeeded and they were now awaiting the arrival of Paul Musseveni and his daughter, who had finally brought home what was considered to be one of the most glorious achievements in the history of the Nietzschean race.

The air was bristling with suspense, pride and... joy even, as strange as the concept might have sounded for an assembly of Drago-Khatzov. The excitement reached new heights when the doors whooshed open revealing Musseveni and Tabea. The duo slowly made their way past the guards and through the crowd to the middle of the room, where the cylinder had been placed on something similar to a pedestal. Smiling and nodding to the left and right, the old man and the sparkling beauty on his arm crossed the room like a royal couple attending their coronation. There was no applause, no murmured whispers, just serious faces eyeing them both with respect and awe.

When the octogenarian and the young woman reached the center, they stopped, admiring the device in silence for a short moment. There was a hint of an amused sparkle within the green depths of Tabea's eyes. The old man really knew how to stage an event, she had to admit to herself. Although the people assembled were just the 40-odd most capable men belonging to the cryptographic department of Drago-Khatzov Special Ops along with about 3 officers in charge of the guards posted all around the huge hall (and kept at safe distance, so that they would neither hear what was being spoken nor properly see what the whole commotion was actually about), the atmosphere of it all resembled a papal audience more than a gathering of scientists presenting their boss with the results of their labors.

Clearing his throat, Paul Musseveni made an effort to tear his enraptured gaze away from the artifact, focusing on a – for a Nietzschean – rather small, delicate looking man, who stood slightly apart from the others.

„Maximillian Escobar, out of Tzu-Hsi by Rudolph, I knew you were the right man for this job of honor," the old man complimented him, his always a bit exuberant tone now more enthusiastic than ever.

The fragile man bowed lightly, his measured, grave attitude more than nicely compensating for his appearance not quite in tune with his imperial naming.

„I am pleased to know that my..." he hesitated slightly, but then continued smoothly, „that our efforts in giving back the Nietzscheans what is rightfully theirs will be noted, my Lord." His arm described a semi-circle, including all other men present into the conversation.

„Of course," Musseveni nodded, „we all, my friends, will go down in history as the founding fathers of supreme control of the slipstream by Nietzscheans, which in the end will make us what we are meant to be: the masters of the Known Worlds."

„Yes, yes, yes, lovely, my dear," came a new voice, 'but how about we now just proceed with opening the damn' thing, so that the gentlemen can start with their actual task of deciphering the scout?"

The crowd around the pedestal split in two, a narrow alley opening up in their midst. At its end stood another woman, the only one present beside Tabea Musseveni. She seemed quite old, although at least 20 years younger than Musseveni himself . In her prime she must have been an exquisite appearance. As it was, she still had a commanding presence: she was tall, perhaps no longer as slim as she used to be, but still displaying an exciting, if slightly rounded figure and grace in her movements. She came nearer with the self-assuredness of a woman used to attracting the eyes of all people present as soon as she entered a room, her head held high on a long, swan-like neck, that must once have been one of her finest attributes, but that was meanwhile betraying her age – as were the thin, withered hands she stretched towards Tabea.

The younger woman bowed her head in greeting then stepped forward and took the old, fragile fingers into her warm, firm grip, gazing into the heart-shaped face with its wide, slightly oblique green-blue eyes, enclosed by a pale-blond, helmet-like hairdo, that left the features open to all inquiring looks. The skin tightly stretched over the somewhat irregular features looked like porcelain with a craquelling glaze. Myriads of tiny wrinkles were furrowing the forehead, the edges of the eyes, while two sharp, yet not very deep lines curved their way down from a pointy and a bit broad, naughty nose down to the corners of the generous, arched lips. When she didn't speak or move the surface of this face seemed flawless, but once its bearer started to show any expression, it cracked like a mirror breaking into a multitude of splinters. The effect was disconcerting, startling, fascinating and – strange as it might seem – utterly appealing.

While the two females, offering a regal sight in their elaborate Nietzschean attires, stood together, Musseveni stepped closer and bowed his head slightly .

„But, of course, my dear, you are quite right. Maximillian, please proceed."

The small Nietzschean motioned two other men to step up to the cylinder. Together they opened up three panels inserted at the sides and at one far end of the cylinder and began to quickly insert a complicated combination of symbols on the tiny keyboards hidden behind them. They were obviously forced to coordinate their movements, the sequences being thus orchestrated that only synchronous keying provided the clearance needed for the next security level. There were six level in total, and by the time the liberating clicks had been heard for the fifth time, the men's faces were already shining with perspiration, concentration straining their features and distorting them into grimaces. It took quite a long time until the final click was heard and a small last panel opened at the remaining far end of the cylinder. A minuscule switch appeared beneath it.

„My dear, would you do the honors?" Musseveni asked the old woman, taking her elbow and gently pushing her forward, gallantly placing a kiss on the claw-like hand while doing so.

The woman smiled with more haughty indulgence than warmth. Extricating her hand from his grip, she swiftly turned the switch.

„My friends, I give you..." the old man began, his eyes turning towards the cylinder which was in the process of breaking in two halves and revealing another, smaller cylinder. „a..." He stopped.

„A holographic transmitter," the old woman finished for him. For a short moment she stood there, silently contemplating what was clearly a Commonwealth courier device. But then her gaze wandered off, from the cylinder to the men around her, to Tabea and finally came to rest on Musseveni's startled features. „Yes," she then said softly. It sounded like a sigh. Without another word she turned around and left them, her imposing figure sailing away as majestically as she had entered the scene. She had however not distanced herself more than a few steps, when the air above the pedestal came to life crackling, revealing the holographic image of a stockily built young man with unruly blond hair and a cocky grin.

„My lords and... Wait a minute, this is a Nietzschean assembly, no ladies present, right? Right. I'll start again: My Lords – and Tabea – ..." he graciously bowed slightly, „I, Seamus Zelazny Harper, engineer extraordinaire, resident genius and – due to your rather unfriendly manners, if I may say so – presently acting captain of the Commonwealth flag ship Shining Path to Truth and Knowledge AI model GRA 112, serial number XMC-10-182, better known as the _Andromeda Ascendant_, hail you as fellow masterminds and bid you my compliments for your outstanding work in cracking one of the most elaborate codes ever designed in the history of the universe, created by the so very humble yours truly." There was again a slight bow, after which the young man continued: „Now you may ask yourselves: ‚Just how come we put in all this work for nothing?', for I do know, oh almighty _Herren_, that – exciting as it might be – you did not invest all this hard labour of yours just for the albeit great pleasure of listening to this message. Well, ask and the answer shall be delivered to you: next time you lay a trap, make sure the bait is not only skilled and beautiful, but also a bit more... shall we say suppliant? And on this sage word of cunning advice I bid you farewell, my Lords..." another bow, „...and lovely Tabea."

The hologram dissolved itself, only to reappear just two seconds later in the stunned silence:

„Oh, and before I go, please do reconsider whether you truly need the company of Beka Valentine. From our experience she is, even under the most ideal circumstances, a lot more trouble than anyone can handle. Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa tried, Telemachus Rhade out of Majorum by Rhade tried, Charlemagne Bolivar tried, Dylan Hunt himself tried, the Spirit of the Abyss tried, hell, even **I **tried – and we all failed miserably. So just in case you may still have her somewhere, believe me: you don't really want to try handling her, too. Just tell us when and where we should come to pick her up, and we'll see to it that she is off your hands ASAP. Harper out."

-

„I told you! Time and again I told you that they are not stupid, that you should take care! Arrogance, my dear, is only excusable when accompanied by success. When, dammit, will you learn to listen to me? How am I to reach the goals I have set when surrounded by nothing but immature hubris and incompetence?"

Paul Musseveni was ranting. For once his famous _sangfroid _seemed to have completely deserted him. Alone with Tabea in a lavishly, yet surprisingly enough also quite tastefully decorated room of more modest proportions, situated in the vicinity of the vast hall in which the formerly heavily guarded cylinder lay deserted, the old man seemed physically incapable to stop himself from pacing up and down and shouting at the top of his lungs at the young woman who in any case seemed rather unperturbed and just as haughty as always.

She had sat there for the better part of the past half hour, after the old man had hastily dismissed the small assembly, hurried her into the adjacent room and practically threw her into the chair. She had at first tried to stop his rantings a couple of times, but after a few failures she had resigned herself to hear out his tirade knowing that it was bound to exhaust itself eventually. Her patience was finally rewarded when the octogenarian tried to wet his lips, found even his tongue too dry and moved over to a small table, that held a bottle of water and some glasses. As Musseveni poured himself some water without bothering to ask her if she wanted some as well, she began to speak.

„You know," she slowly started to let him in on her thoughts, „you might be right about this. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I was too arrogant and – as a result – much too careless in my conduct towards Rafe and aboard that wretched ship. But what happened, happened. We can't change the present by ranting over the past."

„Oh, really?" her father bit out. „Am I to understand that you are unwilling to change your ways, young lady, in order to prevent such mishaps from happening again?"

„No," she replied placidly, „but you should – rather than rant indefinitely about my stupidity – at least think about the reasons that prompted them to let me get back here with what was obviously nothing but a highly elaborate set-up. Have your... scientists," her voice held a little contemptuous hesitation as she uttered the word, „searched the cylinder for any tracking devices, spy programmes, something like that?"

„I... I'm not sure..." her father answered vaguely, his eyes darkening further, partly out of anger about her persisting obstinance, partly out of anger about his own care- and thoughtless demeanor.

„No," Tabea stated. „Of course not. You are getting old, father."

For a moment Paul Musseveni simply stood there, watching her in silence, his eyes locked to hers meeting her defiant gaze. And then he nodded curtly, turned around and walked over to a comm unit inserted in the wall.

„Attention, Security Command." His voice sounded cold and dispassionate. „Rise security level for all Thetis to yellow, the Grand Asclepion, all spaceports and all sensitive areas to orange, planetary defense and system-wide reconoissance on high alert. Call everyone back here and let them start analyzing the cylinder, take it apart, if need be. I want to be sure that there's nothing more to it. Yvain?"

„Yes, Sir?"

„Double the guards at Hunt's doors and tighten security around the Valentine mansion."

„My lord Draeger called a while back and left a message for you, stating that he was taking Our Lady to his own house."

Musseveni's eyes narrowed.

„Very well. Contact him," he said after musing briefly, „and tell him about the new orders. And place guards around his place."

„Yes, Sir."

Cutting communication off the old man relaxed. He turned around and fixed Tabea.

„Better?"

She nodded curtly.

„Better. Still: mother won't be pleased."

„She is already not pleased."

A thin smile appeared on the young woman's face. Standing up with grace she approached her father and gently laid a hand on one of his shoulders.

„A family trait," Tabea murmured softly. „We're hard women to please..."


	36. Chapter 35

Squid109, thanks a lot for your help with this.

**Chapter 35**

"Doyle?"

She cocked her head to a side and flashed him one of her playful trade-mark smiles.

"In the flesh, so to speak" she whispered, stepping back from the bed to let him get up. "Glad to see you, Dylan. I hope you feel better than you look. We have to get out of here fast."

Pushing himself up, Dylan swung his legs off the bed and stood up, but had to lean back against the mattress. The swift movement had been too fast and he felt a spell of dizziness sashing over him. Seeing him sway, Doyle placed a reassuring hand under his elbow.

"You okay?"

He cleared his throat.

"I'm fine. Just a bit light-headed. Doyle, what are you doing here?" Dylan asked her pointedly, shivering in the cold air streaming through the window, that had been cut open. He had woken up with her hand over his mouth, looking into the familiar green eyes and still hadn't managed to adjust himself to the fact that she was truly, really standing next to him.

"Can we save the what, how and why for later and just concentrate on getting out of here?" she cut him short. "Look, Dylan, I have Jonah Draeger and Beka waiting down below your window in an anti grav transport, I have the _Maru_ ready for launch, now all we have to do is get you down there and us all off this planet. Work with me on this one, will you?"

"Draeger hasn't brought Beka away from here yet?" His voice was raising. "Look, Doyle, I really do appreciate what you're trying to do, but that won't work. I'm being monitored, they'll notice if all of a sudden there are no life signs to be detected. I can't even get dressed. And Beka needs to..."

"Hold that thought while you put on these boots..." The android shoved a pair of boots into his hands and left him, going to the window. She lightly tapped her wrist, activating the tiny communicator in her sleeve. "Jonah, send him up! I'm ready," she said, then bent over and began wrestling with something just outside the window. Speechless, Dylan watched as she started to pull, effortlessly dragging a tall, broad-shouldered, bare-footed and very unconscious Nietzschean into the room, whom she carefully deposited on the bed.

"I checked with Jonah," she quietly informed him while doing so. "It doesn't matter that I cut the window open. They can detect the opening, but will probably think that it is open on purpose, to provide some fresh air. Third floors can also have advantages. The guards in front of your door are just that: guards. You're being monitored through the bed sensors. And as you can already move around a bit, there probably was only a tiny fluctuation when you stood up. And now they're receiving life signs again."

"They'll notice they're not mine..." he muttered under his breath while struggling to get into the boots Doyle had provided.

"Who? The people from the night-shift? Don't be ridiculous! You ready? Now get going!" Giving him a slight push him from behind, Doyle guided him to the window and reached for the rope. "Can you hang on to it by yourself or would it be better if I secured you somehow?" she asked, concern quite evident in her voice.

He shook his head, annoyed.

"I can manage alone," was all he answered as he swung his legs over the windowsill. Above his head there was a forcelance's hook deeply embedded into the slightly protruding frame. Reaching for the weapon, he looked back into the room, the shadow of his usual, cocky grin on his lips. Rolling her eyes, Doyle pushed him from behind.

"Yeah, I know, your favorite toy. Get moving," she ordered before he could start to comment on the weapon. His grin got wider, but he refrained from answering and let himself slide over, hanging by the lance that was slowly lowering him to the ground. While still on his way down, he saw her slim body rush past him towards the ground. Looking down he saw her speed braked by her internal anti-grav thrusters as she landed on her feet as lightly a a feather. He reached the soil himself and detached the rope from the forcelance, powering the weapon up and holding it up in defense as he took a look around himself, trying in vain to see something through the misty night. He shook his head, not knowing what part of it was due to the fog and darkness and what was still his condition taking its toll. In the end he accepted that it was most likely a combination of both, noticing that it wasn't dark enough for him to miss the fact that his hand, outstretched with the forcelance, was shaking pretty badly.

"Just don't point that at me," Doyle motioned him, chuckling softly and gently pushing him towards a group of tall, dense bushes dividing the lawn around the hospital into smaller parcels.

"Don't worry," Dylan panted, but then shrugged with a weak grin: "Although I do suppose that, should any shooting start, for the moment the only safe place from my forcelance would probably be behind me."

Before Doyle could answer they had reached the bushes. The android moved forward and separated them. The small anti grav carrier was practically buried underneath a dome of opulent vegetation and could not have been detected by sight from any observation point.

"How did you do **that**? And in such a short time..." Dylan wondered before venturing forward through the opening she held up for him. The android gave him a fake little sigh.

"Oh Captain, my Captain! You've obviously been far too long gone... I never would have dreamed that you would so easily forget the marvels that are Rommie and yours truly..." she told him reproachfully with a cute little pout, while following him swiftly and opening up the hatch for him.

"I never could forget that. Nor the fact that you are indeed Harper's... what does he he like to call you? _Wunderkind_ of his _Weltanschauung -_ whatever that means?" Dylan told her, climbing up inside. Jonah Draeger was seated in a remote corner of the vehicle... as remote as the cramped space allowed it, next to a still deeply unconscious Beka, that he held in his arms. Seeing them both, Dylan could not suppress a frown.

"How is she?" he asked curtly, as he took the seat next to them.

"What do **you** care?" the Seefran asked scornfully, noticing with slight satisfaction that the other man bowed his head, a twist on his face acknowledging the blow.

Sliding in behind Dylan, Doyle positioned herself behind the helm, maneuvering the land-craft out of its hide out with ease and smoothly gaining speed, headed back towards the space port.

Not more than half a minute had passed in silence, before she turned her head, throwing a curious glance from Jonah to Dylan and back.

"Jonah dear, he asked you a question..." she softly admonished him. "Where I come from we are used to answering him."

"Where I come from, however, people answer to me."

"Lucky them!" the android muttered, her voice still low, but slightly more menacing. Wearily, Dylan rubbed a hand across his face.

"Doyle, thank you for the vote confidence, but..." His voice wavered, whether from suppressed excitement, contradicting feelings or fatigue Doyle couldn't really tell, who threw a worried look back at his worn-out features.

He cleared his throat:

"Anyway, Draeger, I really would appreciate an answer. How is Beka?"

"Alive. She's breathing too slowly and too steadily. If Miss Lifesaver over there had not insisted we come back to get you, I would long ago have had her on the _Maru_, washing out the flash – and the sedative – out of her bloody system. But..."

"Jonah, do try to think. I've seen you steer this thing here, and you in the _Maru_ flying us through slipstream while on the run from Dragans is not really an option I'd like to explore," the android said suavely. "Dylan, as far as I can tell, Beka is as good as comatose. I don't think we can fix her quickly and well enough for her to take us to slipstream. The _Andromeda_ is waiting three jumps away, right behind the Fulque Nebula. You will have to do it... Can you?"

Surprised, the Seefran shot a worried look at the woman's back.

"You mean, you can't do it?"

It was Dylan's turn to be surprised.

"You really don't know anything about slipstream travel, do you?" he asked contemptuously. But then his attention returned to Doyle. "Of course I can do it," he answered her with what he hoped sounded like a lot more confidence than he was actually feeling in his abilities to make it that far. If the others heard any doubts in his voice they refrained from addressing them. At least not aloud.

-

In the end they opted for the simplest solution to reach the Maru safely and undetected. They went in the same way Doyle had gotten out of the spaceport. When reaching the fence at the exact spot where she had overcome it the first time around, the android simply jumped over it, first taking Dylan, then Beka, then Jonah along with her. It nearly gave the Seefran a heart attack to feel himself somersaulted through the air more than 3 m high, supported by nothing more than the arms of – all knowledge set aside – what still looked to him like one of the most beautiful, but also most petite females he had ever encountered.

On the other side Dylan, already there with Beka in his arms, greeted him with a sardonic smile, well aware of how awkward and eerie a feeling the whole thing must have had for someone who had spent his life in an environment that considered technology to be a curse and anything more elaborate than interplanetary transport a sign of the devil.

"Androids!" he told him while reluctantly giving up his load to Draeger. "You've got to love them!"

Receiving Beka, Draeger - white lines still visible around his mouth - nodded in silence.

With one last, regretting look at his XO, Dylan turned to Doyle. "Where to? How far till we reach he Maru?"

"Not far. About 800 meters," the android informed him. He sighed. It was out of the question for him to carry Beka over such a distance.

Doyle shot him a pitying look. She had noticed the short interaction between the two men, she had her experiences with the way the crew of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ behaved among themselves and how little they trusted outsiders with each other, especially outsiders they already had acquired bad experiences with. Had anyone asked her, she could practically have related Dylan's thoughts on the matter correctly to the word. But she agreed with his assessment on the issue: if they were to make it safely back to their ship, they needed him focused. The jumps ahead of them were rather tricky ones under the very best of circumstances, Illion – among other things – a system suited for the Dragans also because of its rather poor accessibility. And Doyle had checked on Dylan discreetly while she had been carrying him over the fence: the circumstances could have been far worse, but they weren't exactly too good, either.

With a slight shake of her head, she stopped herself from musing any further.

"Jonah, I would take Beka from you, but Dylan and I are very good with forcelances. In the event of an attack by some guards or other we're going to need to be unencumbered," she offered, more for Dylan's sake than out of a conviction that Jonah couldn't handle carrying the pilot so far on his own.

"You're right," the dark man nodded. "Let's move."

"Right. Gentlemen, that way. Follow me, please."

A/N: Thank you all for the reviews and the feedback.


	37. Chapter 36

**Gambit 36**

Luck was on their side almost to the end. Almost.

They reached the _Eureka Maru _undetected, and they made it inside without any complications. Yet they had not been aboard longer than two minutes, Jonah carrying Beka to the captain's quarters still soiled from Dylan's previous stay, Doyle inserting new codes to secure the access elevator entrance and Dylan hurrying off to the cockpit, when suddenly there was ear-piercing noise penetrating from the outside that ended up with the _Maru _being quickly surrounded by a tight ring of Nietzschean soldiers standing almost shoulder to shoulder all around the ship.

Cowering behind the pilot's seat, Dylan cursed under his breath, not for the first time promising himself to make Harper change the huge windscreen of the _Maru _to reflecting windows once they made it back. Should they make it back. The Nietzscheans had their backs turned towards the ship, but should by chance anyone decide to throw a look behind them at the cockpit everything going on in it was clearly to be seen, as they were not standing more than about 10 meters away from the freighter. _The _Maru_'s takeoff would get them well-done indeed_, Dylan grimly thought.

"What are we waiting for?"

Crawling up behind him, Doyle gave her captain a slight push. He hadn't noticed her and very nearly flinched.

"Doyle, would you just not do that?"

"Well, would you just power up the engines and take us out of here?"

"Those people..."

She rolled her eyes.

"...are Nietzscheans, Dragans and our enemies. Dylan, will you just get us out of here?"

He cleared his throat.

"Yes, okay. Go to Beka, make sure..."

"Don't worry about me or Beka. Just get going," the blonde ordered, beating a retreat.

He sighed.

"Okay, okay..."

-

The engines of the _Eureka Maru_ roaring up threw the surrounding Dragans into frenzied activity. To no avail, of course.

With the usual speed and efficiency, that were his trade-marks once he kicked into action, the _Andromeda_'s captain throttled down his initial reluctance to take lives of his unsuspecting enemies. He not only opted for a cavalier's start, but decided to shoot his way free of the space-port as well. With the old freighter's guns all ablaze at once, the entire hangar was literally pulverized around them as the _Maru _with superb timing took off mere nano-seconds before everything around it exploded into an inferno and only nano-seconds after it had blown the vault above it into microscopically tiny particles.

They broke through the atmosphere so fast that they were already reaching open space before the first batteries of the planetary defense system in orbit around Myrmidon managed to take them under fire. But then their luck ran out.

The Illion system was infested with defense satellites orbiting its planets, mine fields, space patrol squadrons, as well as no less than three strategically placed plasma canons anyone of which could have taken the _Maru _out with a single shot. It had required all of Dylan's skills to get by undetected in his tiny, swift slipfighter, with the Dragans not suspecting anything. However, on the comparatively huge, slower _Maru _and with the entire system on high alert, the chances to get through unscathed were practically non-existent.

From his previous flights both alone and with Beka, Dylan had a fairly good idea where the mine fields were and how to avoid them, but that left him with only one really safe way out of the system. He knew it – and the Dragans knew it, too. They hadn't gotten far before at least two squadrons of slip-fighters closed in on them, taking them under heavy fire. Chances were pretty good that they were not set on destroying their Matriarch's ship, at least not without explicit order to do so; Dylan estimated that their takeoff had been too much of a surprise for such orders to have been issued and reached the pilots. But they could do serious damage, cripple and slow it down enough for them to board it; those orders must have been issued all along and once boarded they wouldn't have stood a chance, as Dylan knew. Gritting his teeth he pushed the old freighter up to its maximum speed, with it's hull creaking in protest as he threw it through a series of twists and turns to make it as difficult as possible for the Dragans to get a clear aim at them. But two squadrons were a lot of slipfighters and no matter what he tried an occasional shot struck home. The _Maru_'s control panels began indicating damage in more and more places.

"Doyle," he bellowed through the com-unit, "get back here and take weapons!" He was relieved to notice that the android was already at the doors of the cockpit, making for the weapons' console and assuming control. With defenses taken off his hands, he turned his full attention on his piloting, the thought of how much less elegant his maneuvers were in comparison to Beka's briefly – and bitterly – crossing his mind.

From then on it got better, but they still couldn't shake off all of their pursuers, whose numbers seemed to increase, no matter how many Doyle managed to take out.

"Damn' it, Dylan! Open a slipstream portal!" she yelled at him as yet another explosion sent a shower of sparkles flying down on her.

"No!" Shaking his head, his knuckles white around the flight control sticks, his eyes never leaving the monitors, Dylan shouted back. "We're still to close within the system!"

"So what? Screw it!" Doyle urged him.

"I won't destabilize an entire solar system so we can get away! We already got God knows how many killed on Myrmidon..."

For a brief second she felt like raging at Dylan. Unlike Rommie, the Seefran android was not programmed to place all sentient beings' well-fare above that of hers and her own. Harper and herself, that was who she had originally been meant to protect. The crew of the_ Andromeda_, the Seefran population, fellow High Guard comrades, the Commonwealth: she had added them one by one to her own, personal "keep safe"-list. A list hostile Nietzscheans clearly were not going to be included in.

Shaking her head and gritting her teeth, Doyle returned to the task at hand. This was not the time to argue with Dylan on principles. But she wasn't pleased.

-

They made it. Just. They got out of Illion, opened a portal and survived the first, dreadful ride through slipstream on a battered ship with a battered pilot. The next two weren't easy either, but compared to the first one they felt almost like a walk in the park.

However: by the time they made it safely to the Fulque Nebula, the _Eureka Maru_ was running low on fuel, protesting from all joints and had several decks damaged, and Beka was still deep in a coma, despite the fact that Jonah had managed to clear almost all the flash out of her system; with things calming down around him, Draeger was finally having enough time to realize how huge a gamble he had taken in allying himself with the very people he had previously double-crossed, for no better reason than impulsive outrage against his former associates and a vague, almost incomprehensible sentimentality for the woman he had loved once. Doyle was still cross with what she perceived as the _Andromeda_'s captain's illconceived humanitarian principles, that had put them in more danger than need be. And Dylan himself was livid, completely worn-out and seemed on the verge of collapsing.

"You said she'd be waiting for us here," he admonished Doyle, his arm brushing away the sweat from his brow while checking his sensors. "Where? I can't detect her," he asked, sounding annoyed.

"Neither can I, Dylan," the blonde confirmed. She checked the chronometer. Then sighed.

"What?" he inquired hoarsely.

"We're too early," she told him.

He turned his head towards her and stared at her incredulously.

"Too early? By how much?"

"12 hours, fourteen minutes and 21 seconds, give or take," the android replied.

"Twelve – hours? Fourteen – minutes?" Dylan scanted, his eyes growing wide.

"And 21..." Doyle nodded, but got interrupted by the Vedran's angry snort.

"Yes, never mind the seconds. Do you have any idea how many times the Dragans can catch up with us in 12 hours?"

"Do you want the precise figures or would an estimation do?" Doyle retorted sharply, her eyes flashing in anger at the reproach evident in his voice.

Pushing himself up, Dylan turned around, placing his left hand on the pilot's seat to steady himself, while he wiped his mouth and chin with his other.

"I... I'm sorry, Doyle... It's just... It's just that..."

"Yes, I know," she said instantly mollified by his apology.. "Look, Dylan" she began explaining in a pacifying tone, "we had no idea what Tabea was up to, where she was headed, what I would find out there, where you and Beka were and whether I would get to you... We randomly fixed a rendezvous place and time and..."

"Hang on a minute," the tall man interrupted her, blinking somewhat confused. "Tabea? Isn't that the girl Rafe..."

"Yes, exactly," Doyle cut in. "A long story, I'll brief you later."

Dylan sighed, looking at her a bit helplessly. But then he seemed to reach a decision.

"Let's go check on Beka," he ordered quietly. "And brief me up while we get there. Now."

-

He listened to her report in silence, frowning as he heard about the slipstream scout, his eyes widening as she informed him on the details they had gained on Tabea, grinning tiredly at the tale of how Harper and Rhade had cracked his security codes and tricked the Nietzschean spy. By the time they had reached the captain's quarters, Doyle was through with her briefing.

"The slipstream-scout..." he murmured. "It fits."

"Fits what?" Doyle inquired.

Dylan puffed out his cheeks.

"Apparently Paul Musseveni is up to his old tricks. He's developing nanobots carrying minuscule doses of flash for his pilots to trigger voluntarily, hoping to create an even more perfect, more skilled, more fit race of slipstreaming Nietzscheans. He somehow found a wormhole near the Crimean System, that opens some sort of portal that can take one to Ral Parthia, where he's breeding and training them."

"Why Ral Parthia?" Doyle asked.

"I'm missing that part. So is Beka, but I bet that Mr. Draeger can fill us in on that," Dylan told her, opening the doors to the captain's quarters. The sight that greeted him was not encouraging and all thoughts about Nietzscheans left him on the spot.**  
**

-

Immediately after reaching the _Maru _they had hooked Beka to life-support and blood cleansing devices meant to clean the flash out of her system. As the treatment proceeded and the grip the coma had on her loosened, she became increasingly agitated, her blood pressure rising to dangerous levels, adrenaline replacing the flash and destabilizing the fragile balance of her physiology. With Doyle in the_ Maru_'s cockpit with Dylan, Jonah secured Beka to the bed with straps and placed her in a – this time medically induced – coma to keep her safe during the flight, that was turning into the worst journey the Seefran could recall to ever had experienced.

By the time they had reached the rendezvous point Beka was stable, but Jonah had not yet begun to bring her out of her coma, not trusting the calmness suddenly surrounding them. As Dylan and Doyle walked into Beka's stateroom the captain of the _Andromeda _was taken aback by the sight of his XO's pale, drawn face, tubes and cables leading in and out of her body and connected to instruments that were blinking furiously and displaying incomprehensible readouts. He'd never seen her like that, the_ Andromeda_'s equipment being much more sophisticated and elegant, displaying almost none of the scary, beeping, blinking, clumsy apparatus Beka was attached to. For a brief moment he felt tempted to just turn around and simply run away.

"It looks worse than it is," Draeger hurried to reassure him, taking in the frightened expression on the other man's face.

"She... she looks bad..." Dylan heard himself say in a voice he could hardly recognize as his own.

"We all do," Doyle stated dryly, as she stepped closer beginning to check the monitors for herself.

"You don't," Jonah Draeger told her with a smile, shaking his head a bit incredulously, before returning his attention to Beka. "I'm taking her off the respirator now," he curtly informed them.

"Will she..." Dylan took a deep breath, then began anew: "Will she be all right?"

The Seefran craned his head at him, looking doubtful.

"Maybe. After a fashion," he shrugged. "But the thing is..." He hesitated briefly.

"Yes? The thing is...?" Doyle encouraged him to go on.

"I can't seem able to get rid of the bots. The flash yes, but the bots..." Jonah sighed. "There still are lots of them floating around, although unlike you she..."

"Yes?" Dylan urged him.

"At least she doesn't seem to have taken on producing them on her own," Draeger concluded.

There was dumbfounded silence.

"What do you mean: unlike him?" Doyle finished it sharply.

"Never mind. We'll sort that one out later," Dylan cut in abruptly, although his jaws seemed to have tightened even more. "Focus on Beka: why are there still so many bots and how do you plan on getting rid of them?"

The other man shrugged.

"I don't know... I could have managed on Myrmidon, but here... I thought maybe on that fancy ship of yours..." his voice trailed off. "By the way: where is it?"

"Coming," Doyle replied.

"When?" Jonah insisted.

Dylan bent down over Beka, ignoring the Seefran's question. He gently placed his hand on top of her head, where he was in no danger of accidentally brushing against some device, keeping it there for a moment, before softly stroking a strand of hair away from her forehead. He carefully bent down even more, until his lips were almost touching her ear.

"Damn', Valentine, hang in there! Don't do this to me, Beka, please, please hang in there!" he whispered almost inaudibly, his voice, thick with fear, sounding loud as thunder in his own ears, although he had in fact remained unheard by the two others.

"I'll be in Command," he said to them as he straighted up, "looking out for the Dragans. You two take care of her."

"Dylan," Doyle began, "Maybe you'd better..."

"Damn' it, Doyle!" he barked. "Stay here and help Draeger fix Beka."

"But you..."

"What part of 'Stay here and fix Beka' don't you understand?"

She reached out to grasp his arm, effectively immobilizing him.

"That's enough. Dylan, listen to me: the Nietzscheans will be coming, probably long before Harper gets here. And when they do, we're going to have to outrun them somehow, play hide and seek, dodge them. And we'll need you then more than we need you now keeping vigil in the cockpit. So please, I go to Command, you go to the crew's quarters and rest, Jonah can handle Beka on his own, and if not... Well, he can always call you."

He looked down on her, then threw a glance at Beka and shook his head slightly:

"I... No, I'm useless here. Doyle please, I'd rather be in the cockpit, I can't..." he pleaded, the ghost of a smile on his quivering lips. "I can't see her like that..."

Their eyes locked. Doyle finally nodded releasing her grip.

"Okay," she told him. "Jonah can call me and – should anything happen – I'll call you to Command. But you go rest now." A small grin appeared on her lips before she continued: "Don't get me into trouble. I don't even want to think about all the explaining I'll have to do, if I bring you and Beka back to Rommie in this state."


	38. Chapter 37

Thank you all for the kind reviews.

And squid, many, many thanks for your help with this!!!

Chapter 37

Jonah Draeger was lost in the incredible sight before him: frowning, in a perfect mimicry of concentration, Doyle was processing the data the_ Maru_ provided on Beka's condition with amazing speed. He had – to no avail – been trying to reconcile the image of sensuous beauty with his observations on her various undeniable, yet unbelievable abilities; while at the same time feeling more and more acutely how much the creature in front of him was mocking both his superstitions about technology as well as the Nietzscheans' claims of superiority. Granted, she couldn't navigate the slipstream, but then again: after his experiences with it, no-one in his right mind should travel it out of their own free will anyway. As far as he was concerned, if they got out of this mess alive and in one piece, Jonah Draeger was through with space travel, of that he was very sure. He'd find himself a nice, peaceful system with a sunny, civilized planet and retire from anything even remotely showing any promise to lead to a new adventure, that much he had vowed to himself.

Indifferent to the scrutiny she was under, Doyle finished her check and turned to Draeger.

"It doesn't make sense," she told him, showing for the first time since Draeger had been introduced to her a degree of uncertainty.

"I know," he answered her.

The android waited briefly for him to continue, then raised her eyebrows inquiringly when he didn't do so.

"Well?"

Jonah shrugged his shoulders, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"How much do you know?"

"Just what Dylan told me. Something about a new race you and your Dragan pals have been breeding on..." She hesitated briefly. "On Ral Parthia. How in the name of the Vedran Empress did you find a way to Ral Parthia?" the blonde finally burst out.

"Musseveni did. I think he stole some technology from the Vedrans, that enabled him to time travel..."

"Yes, we know that already. Still, it doesn't answer the question on Ral Parthia..."

"Look, lady, when it comes to this your guess is as good as mine. I don't know. You want answers on that, you ask him, not me."

Doyle weighed his response for a moment.

"Fine," she then sighed audibly. "Let's leave that. Answer me what you can. This new race you're breeding..."

Jonah Draeger frowned. The weighing look she had shown him now appeared on his face. For a moment he had a silent debate with himself about what he should tell her, but then realized that it truly didn't matter. Beka knew, Hunt knew – and in the long run it would look better if he was the one who came clear with them all.

But before he could begin to answer the deck seemed to heave up towards him and he found himself thrown from his feet. A rain of sparkles came down on him and Doyle, whose presence of spirit and superior balance had prompted her to pose herself in a strange position covering most of Beka while trying to not get intertwined with any of the tubes and cables attached to her.

"Code black! Incoming missiles! Brace for impact! Code black!" the deep voice of the _Maru_ started to repeat into the noise and smoke the explosions all around them were causing, while the vibrating, groaning ship indicated that they were on the run again.

Gripping one of the metal shelves embedded into the bulkhead and holding on to it for dear life, Draeger could only marvel at the sight of Doyle shielding Beka with her own body without showing any sign of excitement, trouble or effort while supporting herself above the unconscious pilot with only her hands and feet. She remained that way for what seemed to last a small eternity, unimpressed by the jerk forward while they entered slipstream, obviously once more plunging into a mad, crazy maze, that they exited with a massive shudder that only just failed to take them apart, continuing at an insane pace through normal space before the _Maru_ finally appeared to slow down and stop at last. It was only then that the blonde android jumped up with utmost ease.

"Dylan, come in!" she demanded right away.

"Yes, Doyle, I'll be with you right away..."

Scrambling to his feet Draeger started to check his various body parts by moving arms and legs around and rotating his head.

"Everything still in one piece?" Doyle asked him slightly amused, while busily checking up on Beka, who – amazingly enough – had come out of this absolutely unperturbed.

"Yeah.," the man muttered annoyed. "What about her?"

"Everything's okay," Doyle informed him briskly.

"That's good to hear," Dylan said entering the small cabin.

"Through no fault of yours!" the Seefran admonished him indignantly. "What the hell was that?"

"**That**, Mr. Draeger," _Andromeda_'s captain said venomously, "were your pals, the Dragans. They found us, so I had to take us out of the Nebula. At present we seem to have lost our 'groupies'," he added in a voice dripping irony, "but I will eventually have to take us back, so we don't miss the_Andromeda_."

"It's likely that they left scouts in the Nebula before spreading out to search for us," Doyle threw in.

Closing his eyes wearily, Dylan leaned against the bulkhead, letting his head fall back against it.

"I know," he admitted lowly, "we'll have to come up with something to distract them. At least there is an enormous asteroid field in the Nebula, where we could play some hide and seek with them for a while. The particle radiation level there is..." He hesitated, shaking his head lightly. "Well, it's insane really, but that will make their slipfighters' sensors play up."

"And the downside is...?" Draeger ventured.

"It won't do the _Maru_ much good either," Doyle answered him dryly.

By now Jonah had become accustomed to the android's – and her captain's – casual way of minimizing the risks they were about to take, and he accurately rated "not much good" as a scenario he didn't care to experience. He waited some seconds for some more explanations or at least an attempt to elaborate on the plan, but when nothing else came and Dylan simply turned around to leave them anew, he exploded:

"That's it? That's your plan? Return to the Nebula, fool the Dragans and play around with them on some highly unstable court until help arrives? **If** it arrives at all?"

Dylan stopped and turned to look at him, a placable expression on his tired face.

"You have another idea?"

"Why can't we send a message to the _Andromeda_..."

„Because it takes too long; and would probably be intercepted," Doyle told him indulgently.

"Still, we could just stay put, stick around here... Wherever here is..." Jonah insisted.

The other man shook his head.

"Staying put, doing nothing and hoping for the best doesn't sound like much of a plan, Mr. Draeger. In fact it is the very essence of no plan at all. We have to be where the _Andromeda_ expects us to be. And we have to be there as soon as possible, in case she arrives early. So what we can do is hide the _Maru_ in the asteroid field, leave a coded beacon for the _Andromeda_ to find us once she gets there, since there is a good chance that our sensors will be just as badly affected as the Dragans' – and try to find a way to create a diversion for them, that keeps them away from us," Dylan informed him calmly, then turned around and left.

"Great!" Draeger shouted behind him. Frustrated he turned to Doyle. "Well, ain't that nice that your hero-boy here has it all figured out?!" he told her sarcastically.

She ignored his jibe. She had finished her tasks around Beka and was now staring with narrowed eyes at the doorway Dylan had just walked through.

"Our hero-boy, that's Rhade," she informed him in a distracted manner, her mind obviously on something else entirely. "Dylan's our plan-guy." Shaking herself up from her musings, Doyle threw Draeger a brief look. "Keep an eye on Beka, I need to talk to Dylan," she concluded briskly and left him alone.

-

To her surprise she found him in the crew's quarters, where she had sent him to before the attack on them. However, she had intended for him to go and rest there, something that judging by the sounds emerging from the compartment didn't seem to be anywhere near his intended "to do"-list. Instead he was rummaging around, throwing mattresses up and blankets and pillows to the deck, discarding lots of personal things they all used to keep there into a heap in a corner.

"Hey, Dylan!" she announced her presence to him. He didn't even look up, but answered briefly:

"Hey, Doyle!"

"No offense, but this seems like a rather odd time for a thorough house cleaning!"

He laughed up, but there was no amusement on his face that remained just as tense as it had been around Beka.

"I'm looking for something..." he murmured, as if she had to be told. Doyle opened her mouth to tell him so, but reconsidered. Instead she gave a small sigh stepped forward.

"Maybe I can help you. What are we looking for?"

"A hologram control device. Harper used to keep it under his pillow – among other things..."

"Ah!" Doyle exclaimed. Sailing past him she moved over to the small space on the other side of the crew's quarters, a tiny room decorated with hammocks, plants, candles and a large variety of basically useless things: Beka's, Trance's, Rommie's and her own refuge for the girls'-talk nights. She couldn't suppress a small smile. Without an express invitation the chamber was off-limits for any of the "boys", and it amused her to see that in fact it was that much so that Dylan hadn't even thought of looking there. She found what he was searching on one of the shelves, a tiny, silvery, oval sphere looking inconspicuous amid other small pebbles placed around Trance's cacti and displayed openly as just another piece of decoration.

"Something like this?" she asked him, re-emerging from the girls' hide-out and holding it out to Dylan in her palm. He snatched it from her hand, a wide grin appearing on his lips.

"Hey, you've got it! I never would have looked there!"

Doyle smiled back at his enthusiasm, but her frown returned quickly upon seeing the captain walk out of the compartment at a brisk pace, heading towards the ladder leading to the cargo bays. Without hesitation she sprinted after him.

"Dylan, wait! We have to talk!"

"So talk!" he threw at her over his shoulder. "You left Beka alone against my explicit order, so I guess it must be pretty important."

"It is," Doyle acquiesced. "I, too, am looking for something."

He stopped at the ladder and looked down to the avatar, who was climbing up behind him. She met his eyes with a challenging expression, that he tried to match first, but then stretched his hand out to grasp for hers and haul her up to him.

"Thanks," she nodded lightly.

"What are you looking for?" Dylan asked resuming his stride.

"Your plan, your **real** plan, Captain," Doyle said in a strained tone, "the one you need the hologram control device for."

They had reached the doors to the cargo bay of the _Eureka Maru_, a comparatively huge space, as was to be expected of a freighter ship. As the entrance hissed open Doyle noticed, to her amazement, that it appeared much smaller though than she could remember. And since her memory was flawless... Craning his head to the side and throwing her a slightly mocking look, Dylan pressed the hologram control device lightly. The back of the cargo space seemed to evaporate – and the space returned to what Doyle had expected, revealing a slipfighter at its far end.

"Wow!" Doyle exclaimed admiring. "My Harper..." she added smiling, slightly blushing at that.

For the first time since she had found him Dylan laughed genuinely.

"Yes, Doyle. Our... **Your** Mr. Harper!"

"Okay, now we have a slipfighter. Still..."

"No, Doyle; what we have is a slipfighter that I can make look like the_ Maru_, once more through the courtesy of our very own resident genius. That slipfighter has an FMS device onboard. After being boarded by the templars Harper had this idea of placing one on the _Maru_, equipped with an FMS – just in case, you know..."

"So we fly back to the Nebula, hide in the asteroid field and then I take the fighter looking like the _Maru_..."

"No, Doyle," Dylan interrupted her sharply. "**I** take the fighter. I can slipstream with it, making them come after me. You and Draeger stay back with Beka until _Andromeda_ arrives. I'll get back to you on time."

"That is your plan?" the blonde asked almost dumbfounded.

"That is my plan," he nodded, sounding satisfied. "And we don't discuss it. Go to Beka. I'll be in Command; we're heading back to the Nebula."

-

The ride back to the Nebula, the race against the Dragans turned out every bit as exciting as Draeger had expected. But in the end they made it and found a place to hide. Once there - and despite all of Doyle's objections - Dylan had departed almost immediately. She was still standing in the empty immensity of the cargo-bay, holding on to a small box he had shoved into her hands at the very last moment. Already on his way to the slipfighter, deaf to anything Doyle was telling him, he had suddenly turned to her:

"Doyle, this really isn't open for debate. Why don't we simply leave it at that and wish each other the very best of luck?" he had pleaded softly.

Searching his eyes and noticing their calm, friendly expression, she had found herself muted on the spot. The image of him yelling at her, shaking her in rage and despair, shouting: "They think all I care about is fixing _Andromeda_. You know what? They're wrong. THEY ARE WRONG!", while being only minutes away from his death superposed his strangely bright eyes, becoming more real to her than the man just standing in front of her right then.

"Dylan, you don't have to prove anything to us!"

A touched smile on his lips, he shook his head lightly.

"I know. And it's not that... However, would you please tell Beka..." He stopped, but then continued: "Never mind. Just keep that for me, will you?" And he had pressed the small case into her hands.

She had nodded, smiling.

"I will. Good luck, Dylan."

"Good luck to you, too. And stop fretting!"

And then he had left.

Tearing her eyes away from the empty cargo-bay, Doyle slowly opened the box. It contained nothing but a small heap of flexis, each one addressed to another one of them, the one meant for her on top of them all and on the bottom one small paper envelope with just one word written on it: _Beka_.

Closing the case firmly Doyle sighed and closed her eyes, hoping that she would never have to deliver its content.


	39. Chapter 38

Thank you very much, squid109!

Chapter 38

She felt like she was swimming. No, more like diving really. And struggling to resurface, while her arms and legs and everything in-between had gotten entangled in a viscous, dark, gluey mass of something that was trying to prevent her from doing so.

She wanted to shout, but feared that by trying the pasty waves surrounding her would invade her mouth, her gullet, her entrails, all of her from the inside, like they were already sticking to her from the outside. Her lips felt dry, her tongue swollen, and so thick, it threatened to choke her. Frightened she whimpered softly.

"Beka!"

With an effort, as if she was fighting for her life, she managed to force her eyelids to open a tiny bit. A tall, white-faced figure approached her quickly. She couldn't distinguish his features and almost shrank back into the mattress, desperate to escape him, but then she felt a large, strangely familiar hand stroking her forehead.

"Easy, don't try to talk. Here, let me help you."

The deep voice sounded familiar and she let herself be comforted by it. She felt a strong arm slipping under her, carefully lifting her shoulders, while another hand approached her with a glass of water.

"Don't gulp it down. Sip gently..." the voice instructed her. She obeyed, savoring the soothing effect the coolness of the water had on her mouth and throat. "That's it, atta girl!" the voice commended her, but then removed the glass from her lips. "That's enough!"

Exhausted from the effort, she nodded in feeble agreement, and let her head drop back against the warm shoulder she was leaning on. It felt good to just lie there, waiting for her senses to slowly become functional again, and Beka was grateful that he didn't ease her back on the bed but kept her a bit upright and close to him. She tried to lift her eyelids some more than the last time, but didn't fare any better: his face remained vague and blurred, just like the surroundings, that didn't gain any sharper contours either. She could see enough though to know that she was on the _Andromeda_'s med-deck. Her tongue came out in a weak attempt to wet her lips.

"We made it!" Beka didn't know if he had understood her, her voice sounding strange and more like a croak to her. But then she felt the shoulder beneath her shaking slightly with what she presumed to be relieved laughter.

"Indeed," he said, his voice sounding as if he was smiling.

She didn't bother to try to catch another glimpse of him, but snuggled closer, letting her eyelids drop, allowing herself to be wrapped up in the warm, secure embrace that was holding her tightly, a tired whisper escaping her lips before sleep took over:

"Looks like we held the line once more, didn't we, Dylan?"

-

The doors to the med-deck opened to allow a very much out-of-breath Harper to come sliding in. Nearly stumbling over his own feet, he managed to somehow come to a halt next to the bio-bed Beka was stretched out upon.

"She woke up?"

From the other side of the bed Raphael Valentine was watching him, an amused look on his face.

"Yeah. Yes, she woke up – and it looks as if she'll pull through. I think she'll be all right, although..." He hesitated, throwing his sister a slightly worried look.

Cocking his head to one side, Harper measured him through narrowed eyes. "Although...?" he asked, his chin coming up in a determined, slightly aggressive manner, while his hand began to gently rub Beka's shoulder in tiny little circles. Whatever Rafe thought wrong and troubling with Beka, it was quite clear that Harper was ready to fight it with everything he had.

"She mistook me for Dylan," Rafe informed him quickly. The Terran's features relaxed with relief.

"Well," the engineer shrugged dismissively, "I suppose that her eyes were playing tricks on her. Besides, it's rather dark here and if she recognized this as our med-deck she simply might have assumed that you're Dylan." Measuring the older man from top to toe and having his eyes coming to rest on his face that was considerably higher than his own, Harper suddenly grinned broadly: "She couldn't have taken you for me, you know. I mean... short guy, tall guy – and with her not being used to have you around..." His voice trailed off. Rafe looked slightly embarrassed. Harper sighed, elaborating:

"It figures. Strange as it may sound, the times when we got hurt in the past were few and far between. But whenever it happened, Dylan was constantly around as soon as he could without being in the way. Some old-fashioned views on a captain's duty to make sure that all of his crew are safe, I guess," Harper explained, an awry smile on his lips. During the past few weeks he had grown himself accustomed to the feeling. "She's simply used to him being the first thing she sees when waking up on med-deck," he concluded.

"I see," Rafe commented dryly. "Which leaves us with a problem: she is expecting Dylan. What happens if he doesn't show up the next time she comes to? Or the time after that?"

Harper bit his lip thoughtfully.

"Maybe..."

"Maybe what? We both know that it's not going to happen. He won't come - and we'll have to..."

Harper nodded annoyed, interrupting impatiently:

"You're right. But we can't keep it from her..." he mused.

"No," Beka's brother admitted, "but we can't risk a set-back either if she works herself into a fit over this."

For some time there was silence, both men looking down on the woman's pale features, both lost in thought and frowning.

"How about we take her to the _Maru_ and away from the _Andromeda_ for a while?" Harper asked at last. "We'll have to tell her eventually, but at least she'll be where she feels most at home. It could somewhat attenuate..."

"You're right," Rafe interrupted him abruptly. "This is probably the best course of action. But can she leave just like that?"

"I'll set Rhade to it, to sort it out with High Command. Would you..." He shook his head and started anew: "I'm sure you don't mind if I come along, too."

"You don't trust me with her?"

"I'm not big on trust. Still: I do trust you with her, but once she's really back - and knowing, things could take a nasty turn, you know that."

"I know," Rafe acknowledged.

"Therefore I'd rather be with you. And it might even prove a good idea to take Draeger along, as well. Just in case there are still some flash bots floating somewhere in Beka's system."

"I don't think..."

"Neither do I, but it still would be safer," Harper insisted stubbornly.

"Will High Command let him go?"

"Oh yes, I think they're finished with him. They've had him at their disposal, grilling him forwards and backwards for ten days now. And from what I've heard, he's been as co-operative as one could have wished for. After what he gave them, his trial will be only a formality – and is still weeks ahead. Besides: it's not as if they wouldn't know where to find him. Between the two of us, I'm sure we can keep him in check."

"Very well," Rafe agreed. "When do we leave?"

"As soon as I've talked this plan through with Rhade, Rommie and Doyle. I suggest we go in orbit around Diphda Five, if that's okay with you..."

His remark provoked a new frown from Valentine.

"Why Diphda Five of all places?" he asked, his reluctance evident in his tone. "Sam Profit's headquarters are there."

"I know," Harper insisted. "But with your precious Uncle Sid now a loyal subject of the Commonwealth and you and Beka being his beloved nephew and niece, I figure we'll be as safe there as in the bosom of Abraham..."

"The what?"

"Forget it! It's an Earth thing..." Harper said, his features again clouding over as he remembered the many times Beka used to offer this as an explanation, whenever some of his remarks triggered yet another puzzled expression from Dylan. **It couldn't be!** It just couldn't be that this was something to never happen again. Somehow, somewhere there was something that had gone wrong, some dreadful misunderstanding, a mistake, an error that he only had to figure out. And then he would set it right, would...

Involuntarily, he shut his eyes firmly, his mind once more shying away from the finality of it. _Damn' it, Harper, get a grip, man!_ he admonished himself._It's been ten days, TEN DAYS, come to terms with it._ And yet, he knew he couldn't. Opening his eyes again, he forced himself to concentrate on Rafe, who was just saying:

"...n't sound THAT safe to me." The older man cleared his throat. "Is there... Would there be any other reason for your sudden wish to contact Uncle Sid?" His dark eyes drilled into Harper's blue ones. The Terran sighed, annoyed. He hadn't meant to discuss this here and now, but Rafe didn't seem inclined to just drop the subject.

"Actually there is one," he finally admitted, his gaze meeting Valentine's piercing one straight on.

"Yeah, I sort of figured..." Beka's brother bit out, sounding anything but pleased.

"Look, Rafe," Harper interrupted, "I realize that your family does have some major issues, but we really have to knot up the loose ends. If Paul Musseveni is who you think he is, and Thalia is..."

"Damn' it, Harper! I already told you all I know and you just confirmed that Jonah Draeger also gave out all information he has. Isn't that enough?"

"No, it's not enough," Harper answered patiently. "Or maybe it's too much, depends on how you want to look at it. We know that – with or without Beka and Dylan – Musseveni is still trying to raise an army of super warriors and pilots; and that he has gotten hold of quite a bit of Vedran technology. But we don't know WHAT Vedran mumbo jumbo was concerned. Time travel, genetic engineering... Hell knows what else the guy's got up his sleeve. We know that on Seefra there were secret chambers, in which those four-legged idiots had tried to breed 'protectors' – basically Paradine, who so far had been only few and far between, nothing else but products of spontaneous and very rare mutations. We know that they failed – miserably, as usual. We know that everyone born out of Thalia and Ignatius Valentine doesn't just fly, but literally lives the slipstream, even though you're not quite as good as Beka. And we know whom you suspect Paul, Thalia and Tabea to be."

For an instant he stopped, slightly short of breath. Staring at him in anger, Raphael Valentine was growing whiter and whiter with each word Harper uttered. He opened his mouth for a sharp answer, but before he could do so, Harper intervened again.

"I'm sorry, Rafe. I know how Beka feels about it, and even if you should be more detached in this matter, it still must be painful. But we can't leave it at that. Sid Barry was there from the very start, unlike you and Beka not a child, not helpless; he must know more about them than you do, must have noticed things you probably missed. Maybe he can provide us with more information. And information's vital, because the way things look sooner or later we're going to have a new war on our hands."

"Because you want revenge?"

Harper smiled tiredly.

"No, because no-one builds an army he has no intention to use. At least, no Nietzschean does so."

"Paul Musseveni is no Nietzschean."

"From what I've seen, Paul Musseveni is more Nietzschean than all of them combined."

Rafe sighed, looking defeated, but still angry and tense.

"It's just that it's so... so..." He struggled for the right words. "I don't know, maddening, infuriating really. I thought that, unlike Beka, I was done with all of this crap, that at least in this respect I was doing better..."

"It's not a contest, Rafe."

"No, but..."

Harper looked away from him, focusing on Beka. He shook his head sadly, then resumed his gentle stroking of her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, but it can't be helped," he muttered lowly to no-one in particular.

For a rather long while they both stood next to her in companionable silence. There was nothing left to say on the matter. All they could do now was to see Beka through what was lying ahead of them all, hoping for the best – and preparing for the worst. And Seamus Harper knew that on all accounts the worst was more than just a remote possibility.


	40. Chapter 39

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

Squid109, thank you very much for your help.

**Chapter 39**

The minute Beka became aware of waking up again, the memory of the last time around assaulted her. For a second she tried to withdraw back to unconsciousness, not feeling up to another fight against the waves of molasses that had engulfed her previously. To her amazement though she noticed that they were no longer there.

Instead she felt light and strangely well-rested, although still thirsty and slightly itchy in places she couldn't reach all at once. Lazily she bent her knee, bringing her leg nearer for her right hand to scratch, while the other reached up to her neck and started rubbing a spot there too, right below the hairline. It didn't exhaust her, much to her surprise, and so she ventured further, brushing away the cob-webs that she somehow suspected to still linger to her eyelids. She rubbed until she could see stars in front of her closed eyes, but then she peered carefully through her grated fingers.

A contended sigh escaped her parched lips. She was in her quarters, back home on the Maru. And she was alone, something that also felt strangely comforting. For a moment she lost herself in her peaceful solitude, but then she frowned. She was thirsty. There was a glass of water on the small table at her bedside, but there was no way she could have made it to it. _Damn'_! She needed someone to help her, like Rommie or... No, not Rommie. Rommie hadn't been with her.

_Dylan_! Yes, Dylan had been there the last time, although...

Beka frowned. She was on flash withdrawal, she knew that much, but... Something was different. She struggled to remember what it was, but had trouble concentrating. Sighing she closed her eyes, trying to relax. _Right_! They hadn't been on the _Maru_, but on _Andromeda_'s med-deck. So why was she no longer there? She felt 'better', but she knew herself to be still a long way from 'well'. There was no way they would have let her out of med-deck before she was fully recovered. Not Rommie and not Dylan. Most certainly not Harper. Something was not just different, something was wrong.

She closed her eyes, trying to relax, but not succeeding. After a moment she reopened them, looking around her, and desperately wishing for someone to come and help her to the water. The captain's quarters of the _Eureka Maru_ looked the same as always, functional, tiny and crowded, yet there was something lurking at the back of her head, that she couldn't put her finger on. For some reason she couldn't remember, it felt less comfortable, less homey than usual, as if something had changed. She checked again, but could detect nothing out of the ordinary. So, why then was there an irritating little icy knot in her stomach? And why did it feel like growing?

For a few seconds she tried to concentrate on dissipating it by sheer strength of will, but failed. The knot just kept growing, accompanied by a slight nausea. _Great_! Beka thought wearily_. If this continues I'll be shortly either throwing up or – as usual when withdrawing from flash – writhing with stomach ache..._

_**Writhing**_. All of a sudden the iciness inside her grew exponentially, and she felt herself breaking into a sweat. Blurry images, quick visions flashed through her mind, too fast to hold on to, engulfing her like a flood. Her breathing sped up, becoming shallow and flat in a desperate attempt to draw more oxygen into her lungs than was apparently available, as she tried to escape the memories of a body convulsing under her hands, of a blood-soiled, shapeless face, of a voice crying out her name in pain, while she kept on fighting at the same time to identify the person, the pictures that just kept haunting her more and more.

_Harper_! The contours of her surroundings began to fade, and she felt as if the bed had started to spin under her, as she tried to force the vague images to become clearer. _No, not Harper_! A man, but too tall, too strong, clinging to her, his grip crushing her hands... Blue eyes she knew... She knew too well... Maybe still Harper, after all...

_My dear, I am wondering, would you care for a deal?_

"Nnnnoooo!!!" The cry never made it up her throat and past her parched lips. She squeezed her eyes shut in horror... No, she hadn't done that! She hadn't agreed to a deal, trading Harper for... _For what? Dear God, for whom?_

Blood came rushing up to her head, pressing her temples together like a vise, all the while something like some crazy film was running through her brain, mixed up visions of the _Maru_ boarded by Nietzscheans, a lot of Nietzscheans, of a white, ironic grin on a withered, familiar, hated face, and time and again the tortured man, tensing in her arms, shouting for relief, overdosing on flash.

_Her father_... No. Her father was gone, long dead now. But then...

In panic, Beka tried to push away the blankets covering her, too weak to manage more than entangle herself, trapping her arms and legs in them, yet still tearing at them in a desperate attempt to get up, get away from the images, from the bed, out of the captain's quarters that threatened to suffocate her.

_Beka, please, please, help me!_

_Rafe_. Rafe had been with her... And then they had been captured by Dragans... Peter, old now, but still the same old condescending, superior bastard... Torturing Rafe? Setting him on flash? _No, not Rafe_... The vision haunting her of the eyes glazing over with a pearl-white dirty layer showed them blue, not brown...

Unable to keep still, she tried anew to push herself up, the adrenaline this time helping her along. But then her feet were still caught in the blankets, and trying to stand up she tripped and fell onto her hands and knees, next to the ravaged bed. She clawed her fingers into the mattress, hauling herself back up to her feet, shaking her head in the vain hope that it would chase away the shadows that had started to close in on the edges of her eyes, making her sight even more blurry while behind her forehead the disjointed pictures kept chasing each other.

She finally managed to stand, swaying and trembling, one hand pressed tightly to her chest, as if she was afraid that her heart, that she felt pounding painfully against her ribs and could hear beating into her ears as loud as a drum, would somehow manage to rip apart her ribcage and elope from her chest. She couldn't get it to calm down though, couldn't get herself to think, to focus on getting either her vision or the images in her head clearer...

Slumping back down onto the bed like a broken doll, Beka began to gently rock back and forth, her hands rubbing frantically up and down her arms. She was moaning softly and her eyes were closed, but snapped open at once in an almost blind, shocked, crazed expression when the doors suddenly opened, revealing Jonah Draeger rushing towards her.

And then it hit her, the memory of the man in front of her launching himself at another one, the thudding sounds she remembered of his fists hitting a body mixed up with her heartbeat, and then the other swaying, slumping down and collapsing under the attack.

"Dylan!"

With a savage roar, before he could even reach her, Beka hurled herself up from the bed, jumping towards Jonah, who had the presence of mind to take a hold of her arms and pull her towards him.

"Beka!"

"No, leave me! Take your filthy hands off me!" she almost howled in rage, her voice so hoarse and strained that he could barely make out the words. Not that it mattered. It was not more than a nearly incoherent chain of insults and obscenities, peppered with demands to let go of her, while she was trying to get free, writhing and twisting under his hands with surprising strength for someone who just minutes ago had felt too weak to help herself to a glass of water.

"Let go! You treacherous bastard! Dylan... Where is Dylan? What have you insane monsters done to him? Where's Peter? Peter's torturing him, right? The sick son of a bitch!... Let go of me, you dirty piece of trash..."

"Beka, calm down! Calm down! Beka! It's all right!"

His own raised voice was almost drowned out by the impossibly loud screams she was howling out at him, as some strange, detached part of her noticed, a part that somehow seemed to be standing beside her and observing the scene. It was this part that started to put the pieces together, while the rest of her was still rearing up like a mad horse in Draeger's tightening hold.

It all fell into place: she had been overdosing on flash, she had only hallucinated being back aboard the _Andromeda_, she and Dylan were still held by the Dragans, everything that she had seen in her head had been real, and they were lost...

A new surge of fear and adrenaline rushed through her, and Beka's struggles redoubled in their intensity, causing more and more trouble for the tall, massive man. Luckily, the noise they were causing had been reverberating through the entire ship.

Eyes closed and teeth grinding in fury and fear, Beka felt more hands grabbing for her arms, her shoulders, from behind around her waist, lifting her up while she was thrashing in their hold. Her struggling was to no avail. They set her back on the bed, pressing her down on the mattress and keeping her in place.

"Beka!" Another voice, not Jonah's, one that she felt safe with, was shouting at her! "Beka, calm down, damn' it! Open your eyes, Beka! Beka, look at me!"

_Hell, why does Harper always have to be so maddeningly loud?_ she thought wearily, but then her eyes snapped open. _Harper_? It was him. Through a red haze she could see his face right above hers, his eyes staring down at her with that incredulous 'I'm freaking out!'-expression of his when worried sick.

Just looking into his face, hanging on to it as if it was the only safe place, she slowly felt herself calming down, the iron band around her head lessening, her heart returning to its rightful place in her chest, although she still felt dizzy. As her breathing was returning to normal, Beka felt drained, empty, her arms and legs a dead weight next to her body. She saw Harper smile down on her.

"That's it! Good girl, here..." Supporting her head, he held the glass of water to her lips and she sipped gratefully. "Very good, take it slowly. Come on, calm down. Easy, it's all right..."

"No, it isn't..." she tried to interrupt him.

"Sshh, calm down, Beka..."

"But Dylan... Rafe... Listen, Harper, the Dragans..."

"Beka, you're safe now. Jonah helped you to get away from them. You made it back."

Exhausted she turned her head towards the new voice calling out to her. A shuddered breath escaped her. Rafe. There he was, safe and sound and looking down on her with that same worried and gentle expression she'd seen on Harper. It had not been a dream! A relieved sigh broke from her lips, as she realized that the scene on the med-deck aboard _the Andromeda Ascendant_ had really taken place, that her flash-fried brain hadn't made it all up.

"We made it?" she persisted on hearing them reassuring her one more time.

"We made it," Jonah told her from the foot of the bed. She craned her head to get a glimpse of him.

"Jonah..." He was standing there, tending with his fingers to some red, angry scratches on his left cheek. "I'm sorry," Beka offered.

"It's okay, the Divine knows that I deserve it. I'm sorry, too, Beka..."

"So am I, Rocket!"

She closed her eyes, too tired to nod her accord.

"Right! Now that we got started on the 'sorry'-game, maybe we could postpone the rest of it until Beka does no longer look so dead... on her back. No offense, boss!" Harper's voice made her lift her eyelids.

"Seamus, how...?"

"Listen, Beks, everything's fine, don't worry! We have it all under control, I swear it. I just brought you here, because I thought that you'd like it better... I didn't realize..." His voice trailed off.

"It's all right, Harper, really; besides, you were right: I DID like it better until..." She hesitated. "Until...," she tried again, but couldn't go on. "We really made it?" she asked once more in a shaky voice, looking from one man to another, then swallowed on the lump in her sore throat while waiting for the answer.

"We really made it," Jonah reassured her again.

"So where..."

"Later, Beka," Harper fell in. "Sorry, Boss, but you've been through a lot and really need to rest. Come on, now, close your eyes... That's it!"

She felt his hand on her head, brushing through her hair. With an enormous effort she opened her eyes a last time:

"Seamus, would you stay here with me?"

A grin spread on his face, while he sat down next to her, taking her hand in his.

"Do you actually know how long I waited for this? I was starting to lose hope that you'd ever ask..."

With a contended sigh, Beka drifted off to sleep.

-

"Okay, that went well..."

In the still stunned silence that had descended on the narrow space, Rafe's dry comment – although only muttered – sounded like a trumpet. Harper's chin came up as he tore himself away from contemplating Beka's sleeping features to throw her brother a vile look.

"Okay, so I was wrong," he uttered defensively, his voice an ugly hiss. "Maybe it would have been better to keep her on the _Andromeda_, but the way things are..."

"You are merely postponing..." Jonah Draeger fell in.

"Yes!" Harper interrupted, looking over his shoulder to get a glimpse at the Seefran. "Yes, I am postponing – and after what we just saw, I'll damn' well keep doing so for as long as possible..."

"Still, we'll have to tell her sooner or later." Draeger threw Beka's brother a surprised look. He hadn't expected help from that side.

"The later the better, as far as I'm concerned," _Andromeda_'s engineer insisted stubbornly.

"I don't..."

Whatever Rafe didn't remained unspoken as the _Maru_'s computer announced that they were about to reach Diphda Five space-control in fifteen minutes. With a frown the elder Valentine turned on his heels.

"I'll take us in," he informed them. "You stay with Beka, Harper. And Jonah, you... stay put. I'll contact you once we're in orbit and I've managed to get in touch with Sid."


	41. Chapter 40

My heartfelt thanks to squid109 for his help.**  
**

**Chapter 40**

She waited. Patiently. To get stronger, sharper, more alert. To get up. To see them. See them all.

At first she couldn't stay awake for longer than one hour at a time. She struggled to battle down the fatigue that somehow seemed to have embedded itself in her bones, to prolong her conscious periods for as long as she could.

Upon waking, she never had to wait for too long before someone showed up. Rafe or Jonah always came in within minutes, mostly followed shortly afterwards by Harper – if he wasn't already there, day and night, whenever she opened her eyes. For days and days she simply divided her waking periods into who came when to see her. And she waited. She knew the procedure. And was accustomed to it.

She remembered vividly. Whenever things had gone wrong in the past, she never had to go through anything alone. When recovering from the time she had been infected by the Abyss and submitted to cardioplegia, they had not left her for a single second on her own. She had awakened on med-deck to the sight of Dylan's grim, taut features, that had splintered into the biggest grin she could recall having ever seen on his face. He had stepped back to let Trance check on her, who had examined her thoroughly, while her dark, warm eyes were brimming with unshed tears of relief. From then on, they all had taken turns at her bedside, Harper bubbly with anecdotes and plans for the future, Trance spinning on memories of their past together, Rommie calmly explaining all that they had done to help her and filling her in on what had happened with the rest of them, even Rhade, who she had not yet become familiar with and who kept his visits short, but poignant, offering brief reports on the crew and some few personal remarks.

And Dylan, as usual the one of them most present – a circumstance he had smilingly explained with him for once taking advantage of the captain's prerogative to not have to answer to anyone aboard as far as it concerned his whereabouts on and off duty. She had not questioned further, by then used to his antics designed to conceal the fact that every time one of his crew was imperiled, when all was over and done with he simply freaked out about it. It didn't stop him from ordering them into battle, to risk them time and again, to ask them to follow him no matter what, but once they were done with the task at hand, the weight of his responsibility for them always seem to almost suffocate him.

She could relate to it. She always felt assaulted by more or less the same feelings towards the _Maru_'s old crew – as well as for Rommie and Dylan and even the _Andromeda_'s new crew, although in this respect she was more than happy to defer the ultimate responsibility for everyone but the pilots to Dylan.

Yes, Beka remembered: how they fussed about her after her fight with Burma, their concern when she had been taken by the Abyss, how they had plunged into the Route of Ages to drag her away from Tyr, the way they schemed and lied for her to help her protect Abel (against their better judgment, as she presumed), the almost incredible support she had found in them when she had succumbed to flash. And so she waited, hour after hour, day after day for all of them to come.

Five or six days into the waiting she began for the first time to sense some discomfort, to slowly start to wonder, but she didn't ask. Not until four days later – and then she asked Jonah, the one who seemed to her most detached from it all:

"Could I...?" She hesitated, not knowing how to make it sound as casual as possible. "Could you ask _Andromeda_ to come and see me as soon as possible?"

He frowned.

"_Andromeda_?"

"Yes, Rommie. _Andromeda_'s avatar."

"Ah..." Jonah said rather vaguely. He cleared his throat, his eyes avoiding Beka's. "Well. I'm afraid I can't. I... You see, we... We are not aboard the _Andromeda_."

For a second she felt her world spinning slightly, but then she forced herself to calmness. When she spoke, her voice was neutral:

"I see. Where are we?"

"We are docked on Diphda Five."

Her eyes widened. She didn't say anything, just lay there as still as a piece of rock. Jonah's head jerked up when she didn't reply to that, his features clouded over by worry and anxiety. He wanted to come nearer, but she raised her arm, her hand motioning for him to stop. He obeyed, but kept staring at her, studying her reactions. There were none. Beka's face just seemed only to freeze over, as if a layer of ice was pouring out of her eyes, slowly covering all of her, starting with her features.

"Beka..." he began a little helpless.

"No," she interrupted him, her polite, still voice matching the coldness of her expression. "I'd like to be alone for a while, if you don't mind..."

"Yes, but..."

"Right now, Jonah. Please."

He left. Almost ran out, praying to all gods he had ever heard of that Harper had not gone off to take a break in town, that Rafe was somewhere nearby, that in the time it took him to reach any of them she would not divine what they had tried to keep from her, and have another panic attack or – even worse – triggering any flash-bots they might have overlooked somehow.

-

The mask of coldness fell as soon as Draeger had left her quarters. In a near frenzy Beka shot up from her bed and began to pace up and down the narrow space available to her. Her eyes seemed almost blind, her face bearing a remote, engrossed expression, as if she was trying to listen to something far away, some voice difficult to make out. From time to time she came to a halt, her expression becoming even more focused, only to resume her brisk stride, her hands tightly clasped on her upper arms.

_First Rafe, then Jonah, and now even Peter... This is just frikking great! The proud selection of Miss Valentine's finest!_

Oh yes, Beka could have reproduced exactly the suppressed fury in his voice, as he was trying to digest the information. The maddening insistence and intensity he had displayed to persuade her to not play Musseveni's game:

_Look me in the eye and tell me this isn't about Beka Valentine finally finding a valid excuse to go on flash, to become exactly like her father, not worthy of affection, not worthy of trust – yet doing it all 'for a noble cause'! Tell me!_

As well as his determined tone, when he had warned her:

_To hell with the CW. To hell with your promise. You won't do it. That's final. And yes, this is an order. Should you go disobey it and should we make it out of here, I swear I'll have you thrown out of the High Guard and from the _Andromeda...

As she retraced the events in her mind step by painful step a cold, dispassionate rage began building up along with her memories, engulfing her like a tide. By the time she had recalled their last encounter, the icy fury was so solid, so firmly in place that it would have taken a plasma canon salvo to so much as crack it open.

„_You don't understand..."_

„_No, of course not. Because, see: that's the way I am. Not understanding. Never. As a friend I asked you, __**begged**__ you not to do it. And as your captain I even ordered it. But it was too tempting, wasn't it, Captain Valentine? To go on flash with such a convenient excuse at hand... It was too good an offer to refuse."_

„_Dylan, you don't mean that!"_

„_You've grown too accustomed to me not meaning it. In fact you've grown so accustomed to it that you were counting on it, counting on it that I would reconsider, that I would change my mind, that I would see whatever there is to see from__** your **__point of view... Well, not this time, Beka. Go! Get out of here! I don't want to see you anymore. Not. Ever. I'd rather take my chances with Musseveni and all the Dragans he can come up with than go on like this with a pathetic flash addict at my side masquerading as my first officer."_

He'd done it. He had really meant it. And had acted accordingly.

Beka sank down on the bed. Yes, she was mad, hurt, furious, disappointed, but underneath it all she was mainly and foremost stupefied. She always had known that – underneath all friendship, kindness and caring – buried under Dylan's loyalty and affection for them was a feral animal, one kept tightly under control, but always ready to come out and rip everyone and everything apart. A monster she had briefly seen the day they met, one she had always feared and mistrusted: his irrepressible belief in certain, immutable values and principles, sort of an inner core of his entire being, the one that had kept his hand steady enough to kill Gaharis regardless of their friendship, that had prevented him to acknowledge the brilliant functionality of Tyr's plans for them all, a ruthless, murderous beast that inevitably gained the better of him – savaging his allies, his friends, at times even his loves.

Yet for some reason she had never expected it to strike out against her. Never. She knew that what prompted him to open the gates and let his mercilessness out was more a sense of horror he seemed to experience whenever someone he trusted betrayed not so much Dylan and his ideals but himself: the way Gaharis – the perfect officer – had deceived the Commonwealth, Tyr – the epitome of Nietzschean tradition – had cheated his son out of his inheritance, or Stark had ultimately not hesitated to strike out against the very thing she... he, like every other member of the High Guard, had sworn to protect – intelligent, sentient life in all its shapes, forms and variations. They all – in their own ways – had been extraordinary, each one ultimately betraying precisely the part of themselves that had made them exceptional.

Like Beka had, when she had taken flash, soiling with this act the one part of her that had made it unscathed through all bad things that had scarred her life: her devotion for the ones she had accepted as her own. And yet: unlike Gaharis, she had not been made by Dylan to pay the price for it. Through some miraculous insight, some amazing circumstance she had never really grasped, hadn't even asked him about – and that he had never cared to explain – Dylan understood and foegave this one time, on one condition: that it wouldn't happen again.

It didn't. Day after day, night after night, whenever the cravings for flash, the urge for oblivion had threatened to gain the better of her, it had been this silent agreement between the two of them that had ultimately tipped the balance against the drug. There had been no relapse. **Not one**. Not as long as she was left to her own devices, not as long as no-one forced her hand on it. And Dylan knew. **He knew!!!** As he also knew that Paul and Jonah had cheated, had blackmailed her. That Dylan failed to see this, that for once he no longer understood, refusing to see it from her angle, felt to her like a far greater betrayal than anything that had ever been done to him. And certainly like the greatest betrayal she had ever experienced, something she could hardly get her head around.

Once she had reached this point in her musings, it was as if her brain shut down, refusing to proceed any further from there on. She sank down in a corner, staring straight ahead of her, her thoughts running in circles.

_He's done it. He really meant it this time. He's actually done it._

Destroyed her life to... do what? Protect something, someone from her? Whom? What? Did he really not understand, not know that... He had destroyed her...

_Why_?

She'd done it to protect him, to save him, the Commonwealth...

_Look me in the eye and tell me this isn't about Beka Valentine finally finding a valid excuse to go on flash..._

But she **had** told him! Conjured him!

_This isn't about me, this isn't about flash, it__** is**__ about the CW, and it __**is**__ about you. And yes, when this is over, you'll owe me even more._

Of course, that was the reason. The first time she had done it for him, but his very existence had not depended on it. This time though... She had risked it all for him, him personally, after he had asked her to help him – and that he couldn't bear. For a moment she closed her eyes in pain. It hurt, oh – but it hurt so much! Not that he had betrayed her, not that he had failed her, but that he failed himself, that ultimately not even Dylan really had the backbone to live with owing so much to someone like her. That in not having it he betrayed the very essence of what she had always thought him to be...

For the first time Beka no longer just knew what triggered Dylan's normally non-existent killer instinct, but experienced first hand what it really felt like. Had he been there with her, she would have shot him dead without a second thought.


	42. Chapter 41

Thanks fo the untiring support, squid109!!!!

(Warnings for a _bad _word at the very end... Sheesh**!)  
**

**Chapter 41**

Anxiety written all over his face, and flanked by both Beka's brother as well as Jonah Draeger, Seamus Harper stopped short before pressing the comm-link to the captain's quarters of the _Eureka Maru_.

"Well?" Raphael Valentine inquired impatiently. "What's the matter? Go on! Get in!"

Seamus Harper nodded.

"Yeah..." he acquiesced lamely.

But before he could proceed the doors opened, revealing a fully dressed Rebekkah Valentine, wearing a zipped-up flight-suit, complete up to a belted holster, that she was busy attaching around her thigh. The holster held Beka's gauss-gun.

"Beka!"

Three voices erupted simultaneously. Surprised, she lifted her head.

"Ah, the three musketeers..." Her tone was not exactly hostile, but to call it friendly would have been a shameless embellishment.

Aghast, Harper's jaw fell down.

"Beka, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like, Harper?"

Finishing the nestling on her thigh, she looked up, giving all of them a straightforward, harsh look, while the engineer turned towards the others.

"Which one of you idiots left a gun in there?"

"Hey!" Beka admonished him, her tone getting sharper, "this is the _Maru_. I have lots of places all over the ship with hidden compartments for all sort of things. And I appreciate it if you don't talk to others about me as if I wasn't standing right next to you."

"I... I'm sorry, Beka. I didn't mean..."

"It's all right, Harper, forget it," she said indifferently, brushing past him.

He frowned, a puzzled look crossing his face as she walked past him.. She seemed odd, aloof. Somehow untouchable. With a sigh, Harper followed her, the other two men on his coat-tails.

"Beka!" he called to her. "Mind telling me where you're going?"

She came to a halt in front of the _Maru_'s airlock, threw a look back at them.

"We're on Diphda Five, right? I'm off to see Sid Barry..."

Harper's frown deepened.

"Sid? But Beka... What for?"

She turned around to face him.

"To ask him for a job, of course. What else? I need to get on with my life..."

"Beka, hold on a minute! We need to talk, you need to know first..."

"Harper," the blonde interrupted, "I DO know, remember? I was there, I know first hand."

"But then..." The Earther looked more and more troubled, sounded more and more uncertain. He scrutinized her face again, trying desperately to read her expression, that remained as neutral as it had been before. "Maybe we should contact the _Andromeda _then..." he finally offered.

"What for?" Beka shot back. "What's there left to say or do concerning me and the _Andromeda_?"

Again he was silenced, throwing her a weighing look.

"Beka, before you go off in a rage, please let's talk."

The expression on her face didn't change, but a small sparkle of curiosity seemed to gleam in her eyes. After a brief moment Harper heard her let out a little sigh. Then she nodded.

"Very well. The cockpit," she finally acquiesced. She threw a commanding look at Rafe and Jonah, who were observing the unfolding scene in silence. "You two stay put."

-

He had gone ahead at his usual bouncing pace, reaching the cockpit well ahead of her. Although she was in no mood to admit it even to herself, Beka still felt the residual effects of both the flash abuse as well as the withdrawal, and shaken by her newest discoveries she would have liked nothing better than to crawl somewhere into a hole, shut her eyes and shut the rest of the world out, preferably forever. She was more then ten steps behind Harper, who was waiting for her with arms crossed on his chest, already a sympathetic, caring, compassionate smile on his lips.

She almost had to grind her teeth seeing his expression. She didn't need his compassion, she didn't need him caring, he could stick his pity where... Anger burning hot inside her, she bit back her fury and averted her eyes from the sight of his. In the silence that settled in between them, Beka's drawing in the air through flaring nostrils in a futile attempt to calm down a bit sounded almost as loud as a horse's wheeze.

"You wanted a talk. Go on," she finally motioned Harper in a harsh voice.

"Yes..." he began clumsily. "Beka, look... I wish..."

"You wish what? That you'd told me sooner? So do I, but you didn't. You've let me lay there, waiting, hoping that he'll show up..."

For a moment the young man in front of her looked as if he would break out in tears. The _Maru_'s captain stopped short of barking at him to pull himself together, scrutinizing him, somewhat puzzled.

"Beka," he used the pause to fall in. "Please, listen to me. I just wanted to give you the time you needed to recover, to... I don't know, brace yourself..."

"Brace myself?" Her voice got louder, biting, accusatory. "And you think I'll buy that?"

He looked at her, a doubtful expression spreading on his face.

"Wha...? Why wouldn't you 'buy' it?"

"Because I'm through with buying any kind of crap anymore from anybody, do you hear me, Harper?"

"Beka..."

"Come on, Seamus. You of all people should know better than that..."

"Better than what?"

She snorted in derision.

**"That**! Bracing myself... Ha!" She began pacing up and down the tiny space in front of the doors, then paused and stared a while at the rail separating it from the pilot's chair, a pensive and a bit chilled gaze creeping into her eyes.

He closed his eyes, all of a sudden knowing what she was thinking of. Doyle had told him what had happened there, how she had found the place, had told him of the chains, the blood... He sighed.

"Beks!" Harper's voice sounded pleading.

"You told me that the Dragans used to punish disobedient slaves with public whippings, using whips with tiny shards of steel at the point of the strings," she interrupted him in a hollow, remote voice, sounding almost like a machine. "You told me that one could see the victims trying to stay strong, to keep their dignity, to not shout out, not beg. And that at the first blow they all began screaming, women and men alike, from the top of their lungs until they collapsed."

"I..." He cleared his throat, more confused than ever. "I'm not sure what you mean..." he then ventured cautiously.

"This here..." Beka looked around her in an unfocused manner, "all of this...**Me**... It's much like a public flagellation. You, more than anyone, should know better than to tell me that I could have braced myself for steel-blades on whips."

Tears shot into his eyes as he looked at her pained features, tears he had suppressed all the time, postponing dealing with the impact it would have on Beka, postponing dealing with his own despair about what had happened, tears for Beka, for himself, for them all, for what they had been and for all that was now lost.

"Beka..." he whispered, a sigh catching in his throat. For an instant, seeing her eyes welling up too, he thought she'd come to him and stretched his hand out, but she withdrew instead.

"No," she said in a final tone.

"Beka," he tried to argue, forcing his voice to stay soft, "Beka, I know..."

"No, you don't," she contradicted, suddenly aggressive again, "I do. I know, Harper! You should have seen him, self-righteous, cold and more reckless than ever..."

The young man frowned.

"You... You actually spoke to him?"

"Of course I spoke to him. Although... I didn't really have a say. Just listened to his... declarations..."

"Beka," Harper fell in, "we are talking Dylan here, right?" He sounded somewhat lost. "What declarations, Beka?"

"Of war, Harper, of war... How could he? Dammit, Seamus, how could he do this, how could he walk out on me, after all this time, after all we lived through, after..."

The anguished cry broke off, as she turned around, hiding her face from him.

For a brief moment Harper wondered if one could really feel one's heart break into so many splinters, each one aching for something and someone else and all of it so painful it seemed to strangle off his air-supply. Apparently one could.

"Beka," he said at last, "I don't think that he wanted for all of this to happen. It just..."

"No, of course not," she agreed. "He almost never wants IT. IT just sort of happens and then..." She stopped and cleared her throat. "You know what? Enough. Forget it! Let's move on, shall we?"

He stared at her incredulously. Had she lost her mind?

"Forget it? Beka, what do you mean: 'Forget it'? How can we forget it? The _Andromeda_..."

"... is no longer a concern of mine, courtesy of captain Hunt. I said 'enough', Harper, and I really mean it. I don't want to ever hear another word relating to the _Andromeda_, the High Guard, the Commonwealth or bloody Captain Dylan Hunt."

"Beka..."

"Not one word, Harper!"

"Dammit, woman, just listen to me! I don't know what you're thinking, but we can't just leave it there!"

"Oh yes, we can! You watch me!"

"Beka, you're not making sense!" Harper shouted at her.

She whirled around.

"And he does?"

He closed in on her, grasping for her shoulders, trying to shake her lightly.

"**He**? You mean Dylan? Beka, listen to me..."

A soft hiss interrupted him; and before he could so much as lower his eyes he already felt it. The barrel of her gun buried itself painfully in his stomach. He could only stare at her wide-eyed, hardly recognizing his friend in the white, distorted mask of fury he saw.

"When I said I don't want to ever hear his name again, I meant it, Harper. This is **my **ship, **my **game, those are **my **rules. If you can't abide by them..."

"Beka, listen to me or you'll regret this till the end of your days. Dylan..."

The gun dug even deeper, while her other hand shot up and closed firmly around his throat.

"Sooner or later we all live to regret some things we've said and done... Ask Jonah. Or Dylan. So why not me, too? Or you..."

His eyes widened even more while hers narrowed to tiny slits, her teeth flashing up in a contemptuous grin.

"Yeah..." she growled lowly, "**you**! The little guy who always knows better, who never shuts up when told to do so, counting on his charm to bail him out." She chuckled. "Not going to happen this time. Get off my ship! Right now!"

"Beka..."

She pushed him backwards.

"I said: Get. Off. My. Fucking. Ship!"

--------------------

A/N: I want to thank all who review or leave some kind of feedback or other. I really very much appreciate it. And I am touched whenever I see requests to update more often.There is a slight catch though: this is a rather long, complicated story and I am well aware of this fact. In order to not have to force people who - for some reason or other - miss an update, but happen to be still interested in this stuff, to read too many of these rather long-ish chaps at once, I prefer to wait with posting the next chunk until enough time has elapsed to allow as many as possible to catch up on it. I'm sorry if some have to wait then too long, I'm trying to throw in one-shots every now and then to make up for that...


	43. Chapter 42

Squid109, thank you so much for your support!

**Chapter 42**

The vast antechambers to Sam Profit's inner sanctuary - the equally vast office, situated well above the cloud line of Diphda Five and therefore always sunny and displaying a light atmosphere meant to counterbalance the intimidating aura of wealth and power impregnating all other spaces his visitors had to pass in order to reach Transgalatica's seat of power - were as crowded and busy as Beka remembered them from her last visit. Three very young, very attractive, very stylish, and at the same time also highly efficient seeming secretaries tried quite successfully to bring some kind of order into the noisy crowd populating the premises, still: the captain of the _Eureka Maru_ hesitated for a brief moment on the threshold of the impressive hall, not sure how to best go about making her presence noticed amidst those masses of people.

To her amazement though she needed not to have worried: mere seconds after she had entered the marbled and gleaming brass space one of the young ladies in charge approached her with a polite, business-like, yet still affable smile that spoke - despite her apparent young age - of years of proper training in public relations.

"Captain Valentine!" The equally polite, friendly voice matched the woman's noncommittal impersonal, but pleasant expression. "How very nice to meet you. My name is Sabrina. Would you please follow me? Mr. Profit is already expecting you."

Beka's eyebrows raised in surprise.

"He is?"

"Oh yes," Sabrina answered, "he was quite thrilled to receive your brother and your friend's visit and has ever since has been looking very much forward to seeing you, too."

Of course. Beka felt blood rushing to her head, her cheeks turning purple. So Sid knew, Harper and Rafe had been here, making sure to spread the news about the break up between her and the Commonwealth, about how she had been chased from the _Andromeda _and how... Public flagellation, indeed. For a brief moment she felt an urge to turn around and run out of this place, head back to the _Maru _and take off to somewhere far away, to some remote corner of the Known Worlds, where no-one had ever heard anything of the High Guard, the _Andromeda Ascendant _and captain Dylan Hunt. But then she regained her composure, realizing that her means at present didn't allow her to so much as refuel and fully equip the _Maru_. Her plan, good as it was, would have to wait a bit. Until then she would have to find a way to gain herself a living, get back into business and build up some stash.

She followed the young woman trying not let her apprehensiveness gain the better of her. Still, the walk through the enormous room seemed to take forever and she couldn't suppress a relieved sigh once she had reached the door to Sam Profit's office, that Sabrina solicitously was holding open for her.

"Rocket!"

The tall and rather massive figure of Sid Barry sprang up from behind the wooden, impeccably clean desk of ridiculous proportions at the far end of the large, lavishly furnished room hidden by the heavily gilded doors. With wide opened arms and a radiant smile meant to express his bliss at seeing Beka, he hurried towards her, sweeping her into an overwhelming hug as soon as he had reached her. Gasping for her breath, Beka briefly thought about wrestling herself free and decking the man, before complying and settling into the embrace, unwilling to cause a scene in front of the still present secretary, who was surveying the encounter with mild curiosity. Satisfied to find her not rejecting his signs of affection, he finally let go of her, grasping her shoulders and, holding her at arms' length, he carefully scrutinized her before nodding, apparently happy with what he saw.

"Look at you!" he exclaimed joyously. "Beautiful and vibrant as ever, my dear!"

Beka smiled thinly. After all that she had been through, calling her 'beautiful and vibrant as ever' was either a blatant lie or an insult to her normal appearance.

"Sid..." she began, her tone clearly displaying the amount of annoyance she was experiencing.

"Now, now, Rocket, no false modesty please; not with your good, old Uncle..." he laughed jovially, clasping an arm across her shoulder and directing her to a corner of the room displaying a small couch and some armchairs.

Letting herself be steered towards them by her 'good, old uncle', Beka almost had to grind her teeth, forcing herself to relax into his grasp.

"Now," he demanded, gallantly helping her to a seat, "before we get down to catching up with each other: would you like something to drink first?"

"Some coffee, if you don't mind," Beka replied politely.

"Sabrina, my dear, two coffees - and then cancel all appointments for the rest of the day. My niece and I will need the time for our happy family reunion, I presume..."

"But Sir..."

With an expression of mild irritation Sid Barry turned towards the young woman.

"Anything unclear, my dear?" he asked, the sharp edge in his voice belying his smile.

With a slight nod, the secretary refrained from any further comment.

"No, of course not, Sir," she acquiesced.

"I didn't think so," the older man confirmed, his smile beaming anew while he returned the focus of his attention back to Beka.

For a few minutes they conversed politely on various indifferent topics, waiting for the young woman to complete her task of brewing some fresh coffee at the small bar placed next to the doors. It was only after the coffees had been served, tasted, and the doors closed firmly behind Sabrina that Sid put down his cup, bowed forward in his armchair and finally dropped the act.

"Rocket, I am so sorry..."

Beka's hand flew up as if in defense.

"No, don't! Spare me any display of regret, compassion, or understanding you may have prepared for the occasion, Sid..."

"But, my dear child, I can assure you, I was so terribly, terribly sorry to hear about what happened with you and Captain Hunt. I never would have expected..."

"Tell me about it," Beka dryly cut in. "Imagine **my **surprise when I found out. Still: all of this is water under the bridge..."

She didn't miss the astonished look in his eyes.

"My dear girl, I must admit that I find your detachment on this matter quite amazing, if remarkable..."

"Did you expect me to rant about it, go into fits about the world's ingratitude or..."

"I don't know about the world, but with your newly acquired status as Matriarch of all Nietzscheans and the way you've been treated by the Dragans, I would have expected some outrage, especially with regard to the latest developments in the matter, most of all considering that Captain Hunt..."

"Let's leave Captain Hunt out of this, shall we?" Beka asked coolly.

With a slight nod, Sid signaled his understanding.

"But of course, Rocket, I can only imagine how painful this must be for you..."

"Sid!"

"All right, all right, my dear. Now, tell me, what have you come to see me about?"

"A job," Beka informed him curtly.

This time not even Sid Barry's famous _sang froid,_ augmented by Sam Profit's cool business head could prevent his features from derailing.

"A... a job?" he stammered, sounding more than just surprised. In fact, he sounded stupefied, as Beka noticed to her satisfaction. Finally, she had managed to catch good, old Uncle Sid on the wrong foot. For a brief moment she wondered why this was so, considering that Harper and Rafe had already seen and informed him on the newest developments in her life, but then decided to let it pass, thinking that Barry's heavy conscience about her and flash might have prompted him to think himself to be the last person she would turn to after the latest events. Which - come to think of it - he actually was.

"Yes, a job. You're running the Known World's largest private freighter company, surely you must have a place for someone with my abilities and a ship like the_ Maru_."

"Yes, of course I can use both you and the _Maru_, but Beka, dear, what about the Commonwealth...?"

She frowned. Apparently Rafe and Harper hadn't let Sid in on everything that had happened. Well, maybe that was a good thing: letting the old scoundrel think that she still had some influence and friends in high places could only lead to her striking a better deal out of this.

"Don't worry about it, Sid. Now, what do you say? Do we get into business together or not?"

He leaned back, weighing her for an instant, but then a huge smile spread on his lips.

"Rocket, my girl, you don't know how long I've waited for you to come and give me a chance to show you just how much I hold you dear."

Beka threw him a suspicious look.

"Sid," she told him, feeling slightly uneasy, "I'm asking for a job, I don't want us to bond, play happily reunited family and whatever..."

"I know, I know," he hurriedly agreed with her, "but, Beka, just put yourself for an instant in my place..."

"I'd rather not..." she interrupted him, but he didn't let her continue.

"Beka, please. Look around you! All of this..."

"Yes, I know, it's great - and really, I am awed, Sid, by what you have accomplished..."

"And yet, I'm an old man with no family. If you're really willing to leave the High Guard, Beka, I'd be more than happy to not only give you a job, but to offer you an opportunity to one day take all of this over... So, Rocket, what do you say?"

She couldn't say anything. For a brief instant she looked at him mouth agape, then laughed up.

"What? You're kidding, right?"

"Why would I be kidding?" he asked, sounding slightly offended.

"Because," she ventured with caution, "you cannot seriously offer me the position of... Of what actually? Heir presumptive?"

He shrugged.

"Well, if you want to put it that way..."

"I most certainly don't want to put it that way, Sid. Look, if you're doing all of this out of pity..."

"Beka, I'm not exactly well-known for my kind heart, surely you know that by now."

Her eyes narrowed.

"O-kay," she drawled. "Why then? Do you feel like making it up to me somehow?"

"Maybe," he admitted. "But to be quite honest: I'm no longer as young as I used to be. One day even my - if I may say so myself - famous prowess in all things concerning business may start to show some weakness; when that day comes I'd rather have someone by my side ready to take over, someone I can trust enough to not ruin either the business or myself..."

"And you figured that Rebekkah Valentine, with whom you have established such a mighty fine relationship..."

"Beka, I know that you have more than just one axe to grind with me, but when push comes to shove I think that I can trust you more than anyone else..."

The blonde got up and started to pace up and down the enormous carpet covering the floor of the sumptuous office. It couldn't be! Knowing only half of what Rafe and/or Harper had supposedly told him, knowing her and her family, their history together, Sid just couldn't offer her such a deal. There had to be some corpse, some putrid little secret she couldn't divine right now hidden behind the generous proposal. But as it was, it still presented her with options that she couldn't just turn down, considering the situation she was in: alone, with no money, no friends, no crew and no security for herself and her ship. Whatever may have prompted Sid to come forward with such magnanimity, she would have for now to take him up on it and find about his true motives later; hopefully not too late.

Realizing that she had for at least five minutes turned his back on him, staring out of the panoramic window wall to the cloud formations of Diphda Five, Beka turned around and nodded slowly to him.

"Very well, Sid. I accept. For now."


	44. Chapter 43

**Many, many thanks to squid109 for the beta-reading.**

(And also thanks for the feedback, people...)

**Chapter 43 **

To say that Rebekkah Valentine adjusted to her new life with natural ease would have been an understatement – and an awkward one at that, for there was nothing really 'natural' about it: she seemed to literally throw herself into her new task, the new challenges, the way of life dictated by Sam Profit and his business. Granted, she had not exactly been born a High Guard officer, and had run a business on her own before. And the _Eureka Maru_ was a freighter ship, involved in... logistics, but that was really where all similarities to _Transgalactica _ended. No one knew this better than Sid Barry. It therefore surprised the old man considerably to see the determination with which Beka took to her new career.

Within two weeks of accepting her new position, Beka had settled into an established routine. She rose almost at the crack of dawn, hurried to the office, established the day's time table, looked up the business plans and checked the ships' flight schedules as well as the pilots' training and schooling sessions. She then plunged into reading the latest reports from _Transgalactica_'s various departments as well as the newest business news available as she waited for Sid to arrive. As soon as he was in, they both went to the docks to get a brief look at the ships that had come in, that ones supposed to be going out, the freight that had been delivered... The afternoon was spent with business meetings, conferences, deals – or on long hours together, during which Sid explained _Transgalactica_'s intricate structure, its various branches, affiliates, unconsolidated subsidiaries and associated companies.

Beka was absorbing all of it like a sponge, with amazing speed and utmost nonchalance. Every now and then she joined the pilots' training – and by the end of the third week she scheduled herself and the _Maru_, that had been brought back to tip top shape, for a job. From then on there were two or three flights a week she insisted on making herself; afterwards, she used the evenings at the docks, hanging around with some of the other pilots in the bars in the area, chatting about manoeuvres, spare parts, business deals... She bonded well – and quickly – with the other men and women, who after a slight hesitation accepted her in their midst without much fuss. The marginal reluctance she had felt at the very beginning: had she thought about it, she would have put it down to the usual uneasiness with which every new kid on the block is met with at first. But it wasn't quite that.

In fact, most people involved with _Transgalactica_, collaborators and business partners alike, were simply awed to have Captain Rebekkah Valentine of the _Eureka Maru_, First Officer to Captain Dylan Hunt of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, Matriarch of the Nietzscheans, victor over the Magog Worldship and founding... yes, well – founding mother of the Restored Systems' Commonwealth walking, talking, sitting in their midst. The news spread like wildfire, causing the company's share value to reach new peaks, flooding _Transgalactica _with co-operation and business proposals, and even changing most people's views on Mr. Sam Profit.

Had Beka stopped to think a bit about it, had she listened to what was going on the other side of the fence of work she had built around herself, had she allowed for more private conversation and relationships to emerge between herself and her co-workers or people she encountered, had she not effectively blocked out every hint, insinuation and question about her past, she even might have noticed. As things were, however, she didn't stop to think The only thing she did, in terms of reflection about her current situation, involved – if at all – her being on the look-out for 'the other shoe to drop' courtesy of 'dear, old Uncle' Sid. The fact that it hadn't puzzled her. Still: she kept on running on max power, her days spent in one hurricane of activity after another, her short nights, to which she withdrew after the seemingly interminable hours of frenzied exertion, after occasional brief encounters with men she met along the way, never to see them again after she was done with them, spent literally knocked-out.

Yes, the nights were spent in some sort of exhausted oblivion. There was no flash. The cravings, the needs, they were there every day, along with the knowledge that she could satisfy those cravings with very little effort, really. And yet, she didn't do it, for just as briefly there was also the cold, contemptuous voice ringing through her head:

_I'd rather take my chances with Musseveni and all the Dragans he can come up with than go on like this with a pathetic flash addict at my side masquerading as my first officer._

And whenever it happened, she pushed it all aside, the cravings **and **the voice and everything else associated with them, quieting all of it, almost crushing it as instantaneously as it came up. Giving in to the needs would have validated the voice, would have given it satisfaction, something she was determined to not let happen. Ever.

And so she marched blindly ahead through her crazy days, that left her in a state of almost prostrate fatigue, that she washed down with a sleeping pill and some strong, stiff drink, thanking the Divine she didn't believe in for having allowed modern medical science to come such a long way. It sank her into oblivion for a few, blissfully unaware hours, from which she emerged refreshed, energetic... and opaque to everyone, including herself. Yes, things were definitely on their way to routine.

-

On the other side of the 'fence' stood Sid Barry, like his 'niece' overwhelmed by the sheer amount of activity she would pack into both her days and his, like her dazzled by the frenzy, like her waiting for 'the other shoe to drop' – on Beka.

As far as her doubts about him were concerned: she needn't have worried. Sam Profit knew exactly what he expected of her – and the impact the news of Rebekkah Valentine's joining of_Transgalactica _had throughout the business world in general and within the Commonwealth space and the Nietzschean prides in particular proved him more than right. As far as he could see, it was more than worth any kind of problems that he felt might be expected to arise from Beka's troubled state of mind. That none of those problems emerged made him anxious, put him on the edge. In fact, it almost scared him.

When he had first received the visit of Harper and Rafe, the latest adventures of captains Hunt and Valentine with the Dragans were already old news; at least the official version the Commonwealth had released was. It was thus with some surprise that Sam Profit encountered Beka's brother and friend, attentively listening to their more detailed story of the events. That there was more to that quickly became apparent when the two younger men began cautiously beating around the bush, asking for detailed information about Sid's experiences with the Valentine couple and their infamous first business companion.

As far as Paul Montrose was concerned, Sam Profit delivered all he knew, quite freely as it wasn't much to begin with anyway. A talented bio-engineer and scientist with promise, Montrose had been one of the few humans to be accepted as a member of the Sinti Academy of Science. A mere two years later his employment there ended on a rather sour note, after the Perseids found out that he had pushed forward with unauthorized and highly dubious experiments, testing new genetic technologies on different humanoid, Than, and even Pyrian subjects. He became a free-lancer; the Valentines and Sid met him some years later and he joined up with them, at first a medical assistant on the _Maru_'s crew, then later providing them with all sorts of jobs and assignments in the pharmaceutical department, where he still seemed to have a lot of connections. And then, after a particularly lucrative assignment, he ran off with the money. Sid had never heard of him again. Nor had he cared about it, especially not with Thalia Valentine herself taking off only six months later. They had never made a connection between the two disappearances. And that was all Sid Barry had to offer them on Paul Montrose.

On Thalia Valentine, he was far less open. She had left, disappeared for a number of years, only to emerge as a very powerful, very wealthy senator of the Than Hegemony, leader of the department of Humanoid Resources in the Than Ministry of Economics, operating both in her official function as well as for her private enterprises – of which the nature seemed somewhat obscure – from a vast estate on the beautiful planet Raia, that had been terraformed and temperately climatised by the Than to provide luxurious properties for the very rich and very powerful in the Hegemony. When the Than had joined the Commonwealth, Thalia Valentine had resigned her official functions. All of this was however more or less common knowledge, but it was all that Sid Barry shared with them on her.

That they had inquired at all, left him thinking, though. And so he waited, patiently, to find out what was in store – from Beka, preferably. Who seemed unaware of anything related to any of this. Who seemed reluctant to dwell on anything concerning her recent, or for that matter, more distant past,. For the moment Sid wrote it off as a repercussion of the latest trauma and waited for it to subside. However, there was no sign of that – as there was no visible sign of some major break-down threatening to surface when it came to Beka. At first it puzzled him, later on it alarmed him, but as day after day passed without incident he began to calm down. And routine settled in, with him too.

And then, after more than three months of calmness, the routine finally ended.

A/N: I know I said I'll take it more slowly, but the thing is: this chap is actually the first part of a chapter I had - due to excessive length even for my standard - to break up into halves. And since I'm not really comfortable with breaking chaps up, I'm sort of anxious to move past it.**  
**


	45. Chapter 44

Many, many thanks for your great help, squid109.

**Chapter 44**

She knew something was up the minute she entered Sid's office to report on yet another assignment that had gone according to plan.

Sitting at his desk, all his three secretaries standing in front of him in a row, Sid was issuing orders at high speed, all related to high class accommodation for several VIPs.

"Sid!"

"Rocket! Thank God you're here!"

"Is something the matter?"

"No," the old man replied, hurrying to meet her after dismissing the three efficient beauties, "nothing's 'the matter'. We're just..." He hesitated, but then concluded quickly: "We're having some guests."

Beka's eyebrows rose in anticipation.

"What guests?"

"The_ Andromeda Ascendant_ is in orbit, Beka," Sid informed her without preliminaries. "Harper and Rafe have announced their arrival within the next two hours."

Silence fell. Extended itself. But then Beka cleared her throat.

"I see," she said quietly. "Well, it had to happen someday... I'll be off again, then."

"Beka, you can't leave. They're here to see you."

"I know that, Sid. It only just so happens that I don't want to see **them**."

"I'm afraid that this time you don't have another option, my dear. As you know there have been new elections for the triumvirate..."

"Really?" She sounded completely disinterested.

Sid frowned.

"Yes. Really. Truly, Rocket, don't you ever listen to the news?"

"Only the business figures."

"Policy is important for business, you know..."

"I know what I have to know... the new laws issued by the Senate, that the Dragans seem to be arming themselves at high speed, that..."

"Still:" he interrupted, "you should also follow the CW-internal affairs..."

"Whatever," she shrugged casually. That she dodged everything related to it, trying hard to avoid all notice on any of her former crew-mates was a piece of information on herself that she was not eager to share with anybody, least of all Sid Barry. "So, what's with the elections?" She braced herself for hearing the news on that.

"Tri-Lorn remained in office."

"Oh well, that's a shocker," Beka said sarcastically. "He'll probably die of old age – and in power," she remarked bitingly.

"The other two are Tri-Ortiz..." Mild interest was to be seen on Beka's face at that, "...and Tri-Rhade!"

She gasped and then almost snorted in derision.

"Tri-**Rhade**? That's a good one. **Telemachus **Rhade?"

"Yes."

She shook her head lightly. But then shrugged.

"Anyway: this concerns me how?"

"They're here," Sid explained awkwardly. "The _Andromeda _and... them."

"Them who?"

"The triumvirs."

"Which one, Sid?" Beka asked sighing.

"All of them."

She watched him incredulously.

"I... I beg your pardon?"

"They are all here, Beka. And they want to see you right away."

"Holy shit!"

-

She hesitated on the threshold of the room, a bit overwhelmed by the sight of the room adjacent to Sid's office full of people that she had thought to never have to see again, all of them impressive in their High Guard uniforms – even Harper; all of them but Rafe, who was the one who broke the ice by quickly approaching her, enclosing her into a firm hug and pecking a kiss on her cheek.

"It's good to see you, Booster Rocket. You're looking great," he whispered in her ear, his embrace tightening, as if he knew that she needed some strength and encouragement. _Which he probably does,_ Beka thought bitterly.

"It's good to see you, too," she answered, firmly returning the hug. But then she freed herself and stepped closer to the others.

Isabella Ortiz was standing slightly to the left, next to a severe and cold looking Rhade once again sporting a small, elaborate beard on his chin and very closely cut hair, his splendid uniform making his _homo invictus_-aura even more intimidating. Alongside him was Harper, also looking rather impressive, had it not been for his eyes, that looked at her exactly as warm and fondly as she remembered them. They were just infinitely more sad, but that was the only change she could detect in them. Beka swallowed and nodded slightly towards him in greeting, but then forced herself to look away to Tri-Lorn. The man was just as he had been the last time they had met: handsome, if slightly soft, with a detached, easy-going atmosphere of power floating all around him.

"Gentlemen, Ma'am!" Beka greeted with a curt, sharp nod.

"Captain, I'm so glad you found time..." Tri-Lorn began in his pleasant, a bit raspy voice.

"Let's cut the crap now, shall we?" Beka interrupted sharply. "You want something from me. Tell me what it is. And bear in mind that I am more than likely to refuse you..."

"You are?" Tri-Lorn sounded surprised. "You don't even know what we've come to see you about..."

"Oh, I can imagine. Something came up. Something you need my help with. Which makes all previous decisions irrelevant. What is it?"

"Decisions? I'm not quite sure what you mean," the first triumvir inserted cautiously, but continued swiftly before she could go on: "Nonetheless, you're right. We have – we believe – quite solid information that the Dragan attack is only months away. We have our fleet ready, as ready as it will be. Waiting for much longer would not increase our strength and maybe help the Dragans. We think it might be better to strike first. And we want you – as the Nietzschean Matriarch – to do it..."

Beka's eyes narrowed.

„Really?" she drawled, a mean undertone in her voice.

The tall, dark man frowned.

"Yes, really," he then stressed confirming.

"What about Dylan?"

The frown deepened.

"Dylan?" Tri-Lorn's voice sounded puzzled. "As in... as in 'Dylan Hunt'?"

"No, as in 'Dylan Thomas'! I thought maybe you could broadcast some ancient poetry on all channels, try out a new strategy: boring the Dragans to death!" Beka exclaimed ironically. "Of course Dylan Hunt!" she then snorted.

"What about him?" the triumvir inquired.

"What do you mean, what about him? I can hardly believe that he would be approving of such an idea!"

"Well, whatever he would have approved or not approved of..."

"You haven't even told him? Oh, come on now!"

She looked all around her, her eyes darting from one face to another. But for Harper's and Rafe's they all looked at a loss. In the troubled silence, Harper sighed aloud, then turned to Sid.

"You never spoke to her," he said in an emotionless tone.

The old man met his eyes head on – then shrugged in a helpless manner. Beka, observing the exchange between the two men, stepped closer to them:

"Speak to me?" she echoed quietly. "Speak to me about what?" Her eyes darted from one man to another. "Harper?" she asked sharply. He didn't answer. "Sid?" They paid no attention to her, eyeing one another.

"You told me you tried," Sid said lowly. "And what ensued from it."

"You had a lot of time, Mr. Barry. A hell of a lot more than I did."

The businessman shook his head.

"It's not a matter of time."

"He's right, Seamus," Rafe came to his support. He measured Sid from head to toe. "You hoped she would get it from somewhere... someone else."

Sam Profit nodded in silence.

"Umm, hello! Get what? From whom? Would you care to speak **to **me instead of**about **me for a change? I am not deaf, people!" Beka fell in, annoyed. She looked all around her. Sid avoided her eyes, as did Rafe. And Harper. Tri-Lorn still seemed at a loss. She could relate to his feelings. And then her eyes fell on Isabella Ortiz. The older woman watched her, warmly, intensely, saddened. For a brief moment Beka returned her gaze – and then she looked away, wrapping herself in her own arms, withdrawing from them all, turning her back on them and moving to a window. She looked out for a short while – and then her shoulders sagged. She leaned gently forward until her forehead touched the cold, cooling glass of the window. Finally she sighed softly and turned around, her arms hanging limply along her sides. Her eyes looked defeated, as she threw Tri-Ortiz a direct, open gaze.

"Tell me!" she demanded quietly. "What has Dylan done?"

The woman came nearer until she stood as close as possible to her, taking her hands in a firm, warm grip. Beka stiffened, trying to draw her hands back, but then relaxed and nodded.

"What did he do?" she inquired anew, even stiller.

"He's named you next of kin, child," Tri-Ortiz replied gently, "he's named you next of kin."


	46. Chapter 45

**  
**

**Chapter 45**

Five hours later they were all sitting in the _Andromeda_'s briefing room, as had been suggested by Beka Valentine in a strained, small voice. She had left them immediately afterwards, not even waiting for a response. Not that there had been a need to: her tone had been leaving no room for debate.

As they were now all sitting around the long glass table, each and every one stole furtive, rapid glances to the woman presiding at the one far end, seated in the place Dylan used to choose. She had not hesitated for a single second after entering the room well ahead of them all, picking the chair naturally, sitting down as if she had never left.

Doyle and Rommie had joined their ranks, from which Sam Profit had wisely excused himself before anyone could have pointed out that there was no place for a – however wealthy and mighty – civilian at a Commonwealth war-council.

"So," Beka began, skipping all pleasantries, "you actually want me to take command of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ and lead the fleet into battle against Illion."

Tri-Lorn, whom Harper had informed on all misapprehensions that had obviously occurred between Captain Valentine and the _Andromeda_'s crew, nodded briefly.

"Yes, we feel that we might have a better chance that way: you're the Nietzschean Matriarch, the prides on our side are a lot more likely to follow you than any other commander we might come up with, even Tri-Rhade. You've proven that you can successfully overcome an enemy stronger and more ruthless, when you took down the Magog. And you are a legend among the High Guard pilots. With all Commonwealth forces, in fact," he ended smilingly.

Beka craned her head, a small, ironic gleam in her eyes.

"I've also been AWOL for the past three months…"

"We knew where you were, Captain Valentine; and we assumed…" Tri-Lorn's voice trailed off, the man quite obviously not knowing precisely how to express himself most diplomatically on the matter. He cleared his throat: "Anyway, we knew… Sort of… And Tri-Rhade as well as Captain Harper explained…"

Beka shook her head, the ironic expression deepening.

"**Tri**-Rhade!**Captain **Harper!" she exclaimed… "Three months gone and everyone is getting a bit megalomaniac, no? Or maybe life goes on a lot better without me as far as the Commonwealth and its loyal subjects are concerned, hm? Makes one wonder what you really need me for…"

"Beka…" Harper tried to cut in, a frown on his face.

"No, never mind, Seamus! I think I already know." Her eyes slowly passed from his to Rhade's cold features and moved to Tri-Lorn's impassive poker-face, on to Rafe's concerned one, passing by Doyle's stern glare on her and Rommie's neutral expression, coming to rest finally on Tri-Ortiz. Digging into the woman's dark gaze, Beka continued: "You think that I can foresee Musseveni's moves better, you hope that with my knowledge about their system and plans you will get an edge on them. And you believe that – in view of all that happened – I will pursue my goals against them more ruthlessly than anyone else would."

Isabella Ortiz held her own, not diverting her eyes from the young, blonde woman.

"Would we be right in our assumptions?" she asked her in a moderate tone. "I mean, after all, we've been more than patient and understanding, Captain…"

"I didn't know you were…" Beka objected quickly.

"Regardless, you know now," Tri-Lorn threw in.

The captain of the _Maru _let her gaze rest on him.

"So what are you saying? That I owe you for that, for not throwing me out of the High Guard despite my… less than stable and reliable conduct?" She snorted in derision. "And **what **do I owe you? A preemptive strike against an entire people? Do you really think you're worth that much?"

"No, we don't. And if you'd rather resign your commission and leave it at that, we will certainly regret it, but we won't object, since we know, of course, that you don't 'owe' us anything, that – whatever your duties towards the Commonwealth – you've already put in for us more than anyone else, except maybe…" Tri-Ortiz left the sentence unfinished. "Captain Valentine, please believe me: I do know exactly where you're standing right now. I can relate – and I am truly sorry for you. I know you don't owe us, I even know in fact that we might not even be 'worth it', but…" she resumed determined, "maybe he was?"

The women's eyes held on to each other, both of them challenging the other to not turn away, to not run, to remember, the sadness in their both gaze a solid proof that they did. Finally Beka nodded:

"Yes, you were right then. And you're right now. He IS worth it. But not under all circumstances, not in any case. I accept your offer, I'm taking command of the _Andromeda Ascendant _and I will lead you against the Dragans, but first you have to show me what evidence you have against them, how solid is your intel… I won't…"

"Captain Valentine, " Tri-Lorn interrupted, "you know better than anyone…"

"No," she cut in sharply, "I know what Paul Musseveni did to **me**, I know what he did to **us**, I know some Dragans who knew about what he was doing. I don't know anything about what they have in store now, although I have some suspicions on what they might want. But what they want and what they can achieve are two different matters. Show me your information."

The First Triumvir sighed.

"Captain Hunt…"

"…is gone," Beka concluded his sentence. "And nothing I do, no amount of blood I spill will bring him back. And even if it would, I still couldn't do it, because in acting this way I would be betraying everything he stood for. I turned my back on you once, turning my back on him…"

"Beka…" Harper tried to plead with her.

She shook her head.

"No, Harper, I did it. For whatever reasons, I did it – and I'm sorry. And I won't do it again. But if you want me to take out the Dragans, I will need proof that they're planning disaster. It can't be just about revenge."

"It isn't," Tri-Ortiz said firmly, with conviction. "However, it is not exactly solid proof either. But we will show you everything we have, you may then decide for yourself."

"Of course we show you," Tri-Lorn agreed with her, to the silent nods of all others present around the long glass table. Only Rhade did not show any sign of approval, instead staring just as coldly and sternly at her as before, as Beka noticed.

"Rhade? You don't approve?" she challenged him head on.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Tri-Lorn at the disrespectful address; triumvirs were always to be addressed by title. Telemachus Rhade didn't seem to mind, though. He had bigger worries – and was too accustomed to Beka's abrupt manners to expect otherwise.

"For the record, Beka," he stated crisply, "I do not approve of **any **of this. "We are standing here because your error of judgment…"

"Now, wait a minute," Raphael Valentine threw in, "if you want to blame someone, you will have to take me…"

"No, I don't," Rhade brushed his argument aside, "you are not my friend, you are not my crew-mate, you are not the one Dylan would have sold his soul for, you are not High Guard. Beka is – and she should have known better. In fact, I suspect that she DID know better…" The Nietzschean's dark eyes bore into the human's, who finally looked away. "Yes," he then continued, "yes, so I imagined."

Despite of clearing his throat, Seamus Harper's voice suddenly falling in sounded a little shaky:

"I don't think this is the right time and place…"

"Oh, get off my back, Harper! 'The right time and place,' my ass!" the Nietzschean barked at him.

Tri-Lorn blinked and even Tri-Ortiz briefly bent her head, before resuming to watch the scene unfolding with curious, compassionate eyes.

"When, Harper," Rhade thundered on, "when was there ever a right time and right place for this? That is just my point: there has never been one. Had there been, had anyone of us managed to talk to either one of them about it or at least force them to talk with each other, we probably wouldn't be standing like this here today. Don't you agree, Captain Valentine?" His head snapped around sharply towards Beka.

"And if I do?" Beka acquiesced quietly. It rendered Rhade speechless for a moment. But then, his cold tone firmly back in place, he concluded:

"Like I said, for the record: as your friend I don't approve of the way you misjudged the events that led to your capture, as Dylan's friend I don't approve of the way you allowed your brother's schemes to create a situation, that HAD to force Dylan's hand and prompt him to act on your behalf; as your former crew-mate – and subordinate officer – who already had the 'pleasure' of enjoying your conduct both in the matter of Tyr Anasazi as well as during the battle of Arkology, I don't approve of the way you simply ran away from us as soon as you could…"

Both Beka and Harper spoke up at the same time:

"Ah yes, I was wondering when Tyr, Arkology and Louisa would come up; while you're at it, why don't you mention Seefra, and get done with it, too …" Beka inserted coldly.

"Dammit, Rhade, she didn't run, she thought that Dylan had thrown her out of…"

"Oh, wake up, Harper!" the Nietzschean snapped at him, ignoring Beka completely. "For the brightest genius this side of the Known Worlds you can be immensely obtuse when it comes to your 'number 1 bud'. She thought nothing of that kind. Didn't you see her face when Tri-Ortiz approached her on Dylan? She **knew**, Harper, dammit, she's known all along!"

The engineer blinked rapidly, turning his head towards his friend.

"Beka?" he inquired in an incredulous, almost child-like voice.

She was staring wide-eyed, immobile at Rhade.

"Go on," she urged him icily.

"As a High Guard, I don't approve of having someone of your… volatile nature in command of our fleet's flag ship, as a triumvir I don't approve of laying the Commonwealth's fate into the hands of someone, who at least right now seems to be in a rather precarious state of mind. And – last not least – as a Nietzschean I don't approve of a Matriarch reluctant to take immediate and final action against a putrid branch of our race, that has already proven itself to be so time and again in the past, causing for all of us more trouble than I for one care to experience..." Rhade finished, panting with fury.

"To cut a long story short," Beka replied sounding almost casually, "you don't approve of me, period. Well, that's not exactly news now, is it?" She turned towards the two other triumvirs, who had kept silent throughout the Nietzschean's outburst. "He's got a point, though" she told them, raising a delicate eyebrow.

"More than one," the avatar of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ fell in, letting her voice be heard for the very first time.

Leaning back in her chair, Beka looked at Rommie, her eyes softening up and almost clouding over.

"More than one," she conceded, sounding a bit choked.

"But," Rommie told her softly, "he has been outvoted. Why don't you tell her why?" she then asked the First Triumvir.

Tri-Lorn sighed.

"I have always placed great value in Captain Hunt. I will be honest with you, Captain Valentine: we are all well aware of everything Tri-Rhade mentioned. But so was Captain Hunt. And yet he decided that you are still the one to follow him in command; no matter what happened, what you did, what he did – time and again he decided that you are best suited as his second-in-command."

For no longer than a fraction of a second Beka closed her eyes, as if wanting to shut everything and everyone out, retreat to some place of her own, but then she shook herself out of the brief moment of weakness.

"Very well," she nodded quietly. "I adjourn the meeting until I've seen the intel. I won't take long. We'll see each other again here in five hours. Gentlemen, Ma'am!" she nodded briefly, standing up from the table. "Rommie, Rafe, you're with me. Captain's office."

"Beka, it might be better if Doyle and I join you, too," Harper offered.

"Sure thing, Harper. Come along."**  
**


	47. Chapter 46

Okay, this is meant sort of like a recap chapter of all information that was scattered throughout the entire story so far, since there have time and again been some questions in that respect. Whoever needs it, stop struggling at finding the answers to your questions all over the place, chances are pretty good you'll find them here. The rest who don't need it: just skip it and wait for the next installment, please...

And _squid109_: a whole load full of thanks for this one in particular. Sorry to have put you through it, too - but I hope you know that I myself never would have made it without your help on this one...

**Chapter 46**

She sat in stony silence, staring over at Rafe standing across the room. When he sketched a tiny gesture showing that he wanted to approach her, Beka stopped him with a raised hand, indicating that she didn't want him near.

They had spent the last hour gathering together all facts they had so far managed to come up with, as indicated by the huge amount of flexis strewn before Beka on the glass desk in the captain's office. The _Maru_'s captain had at first listened in silence to all the details offered her, but had then begun to fill in the picture with bits and pieces of information that her own experiences had provided, some of them adding up to what they already knew, but some pieces completely new to the others.

Located in an almost forgotten corner of the Milky Way, far out behind the Volturia asteroid belt there was a slipstream portal that opened to the in itself unstable Crimean system. It was a rather unusual one, opening up on regular basis, but one that couldn't be opened by ships desiring to transit through it... The ships, what few there were at all able to navigate through Crimea, that wanted to enter could not initiate it, but had to wait for it to appear. When it did appear it demonstrated another unusual aspect as it began exerting a strong gravitational pull, slowly sucking in everything in its vicinity. Jonah Draeger had told them all he knew about it, adding that he had never seen anything like it before.

"He's right, to some extent," Beka confirmed it now. "Of course, he doesn't really understand slipstream and his experience with space travel and the phenomena you can encounter are practically non-existant."

"Meaning that you can compare it to things we already had to deal with," Rommie asked her, sounding merely scientifically interested.

"Well," Beka acquiesced, " the way it fluctuates periodically, this total voidness the instruments show... It is strange, but we've seen it before with the Route of Ages, the All Nullification Point and..."

"And?" Harper exclaimed outraged. "There's more to be added to that? What's more hell than hell?"

"The tunnel," Beka answered sternly cutting of Harper's diatribe. "It exerts the same kind of slow, strong, inescapable pull like the tunnel of the Derivas..."

"The what?" Rafe's puzzlement was mirrored by Doyle's expression, while Harper and Rommie looked aghast at Beka, who merely shrugged as if apologizing. "I know," she said, "I know... And once you're in it closes in on one, much similar to a narrowing, strongly meandering single slipstream string..."

"That doesn't make sense!" Doyle interrupted her. "Did you collect data? Are they on the _Maru_? Did you try to figure it out?"

"Goodness, Doyle, now that you tell me...! Right... Go figure, I forgot all about it; but then I was a bit busy just staying alive." Ennervated, Beka pressed her lips together, but then told them in a more moderate tone about how things had gone: the ride, that begun slowly, gained in speed exponentially, the gravitational forces the _Maru _had been subjected to throwing the battered, old vessel into trouble and for a rather long time, as Draeger also had told them about his memories concerning the trip to Ral Parthia. When Beka made that rather vague piece of information more precise in revealing that 'a rather long time' meant 41 hours Harper and Rafe gasped in horror, while even both androids looked positively stunned.

Had they not already been convinced that the former Seefran tycoon was telling the truth about the genetic experiments Musseveni was conducting involving the assimilation of flash-enhanced reflexes into the Nietzschean DNA (in and of itself a rather fantastic sounding notion that many of the Commonwealth interrogators had dismissed at first), this last bit Beka offered would have been enough to convince them. It was the only possibility to reach out to the pocket universe the Vedrans had confined Ral Parthia to, where – again according to Draeger and now confirmed by Beka – a system quite similar to the former Seefran one had been put in place around – once more – two artificial suns that, luckily unlike the Seefran ones, seemed to be intact.

Aware that they were having problems getting their heads around it all, Beka did her best to interpret what she had experienced for them:

"Look, guys, I think that at some point the Vedrans became aware that over the centuries there had been quite a few breaches in their security, that had resulted in technology including tesseracting being stolen by various more or less shady individuals - like Peter. And by the time Ral Parthia had been cut off from slipstream they must have created a new tesseracting method. Which brings us to Peter. What exactly do we have on Musseveni himself?"

"A bit," Harper told her after exchanging a brief glance with Rafe.

The 'founding father of the Nietzscheans', as Draeger often called him during the interrogations, earning himself time and again disapproving glares from Rhade, whose former dislike of the man he had come to know on Seefra as 'Peter' had turned into an almost nauseating loathing similar to the one he had experienced towards Tyr Anasazi, was originally Paul Montrose, born on Earth sometime around 8350 CY.

"Did Jonah tell you all that?" Beka wanted to know.

"Some of it," Harper admitted, "but he was born on Seefra and only late in his life confronted with the Commonwealth timeline and the universe outside his enclosed home system, so he still has trouble finding his way around, but we were able to make the pieces of information he delivered on Musseveni fit into the larger puzzle..."

"I'm listening."

Harper sighed, a sad look on his face:

"In Montrose's time Earth had been somewhat of an Utopia, a planet firmly bound into the Systems' Commonwealth, devoted mainly to science and arts and crafts, protected by the High Guard and fondly guided by the Perseids, who regarded Terra a bit like a favorite child. However, for all of our undeniable aptitudes as artists and scientists: we humans have at all times never been a species solely dedicated to peaceful occupations. Many of our ambitions can be found in such fields, but many others remained unsatisfied, at least with some of us. And among them there is not so much a lust for more power as maybe a certain desire for prominence..." Harper smiled embarrassed. "Anyway: although our talents were recognized by all, although we had managed to spread out throughout all Known Worlds, despite sharing equal rights and duties, to some of us all of this just didn't seem enough. Paul Montrose must have been among them."

"What exactly happened?"

Harper shrugged.

"Draeger never got to hear the entire story, but from several remarks of Musseveni's he thinks that Peter, Paul or whatever he called himself then, attracted the attention of the chinheads as some sort of prodigy and was sent to Tarn-Vedra to attend the Imperial Colleges. Back on Earth he had been regarded as something special but when he got to Tarn Vedra he found that he had been nothing more than a big fish in a small pond and that out in the ocean there were plenty more fish as big if not bigger than he was, something that didn't go over well with him at all."

Beka nodded. Hubris. It matched well with her own experiences with him. She asked for the rest, but apparently there wasn't much more to be said.

This was the limit of what Draeger had learned during the months the two men spent together on Seefra, as Draeger, with help from the Terran, recovered from his nearly fatal accident caused by his attempt to poison the Andromeda crew. Through various means, not all of them legal, they managed to acquire a large portion of DragoCorp's assets. They had used the money to start a lab, coming up with many ideas for several medical problems, some of them questions Jonah had himself always been intrigued by, while others seemed to him more hypothetical issues. It was only after 'Peter' had taken him along through the Route of Ages and away from Seefra, that Draeger discovered them to be quite real matters concerning species, races and environments he hadn't known to exist.

Reaching the Known Worlds, in the current time line, 'Peter' had revealed to an almost dumbfounded Seefran that his name was Paul Musseveni and that he was the silent partner of a huge, highly lucrative conglomerate of weapons manufacturing companies, TechnoCore, ran by an interesting lady who was his companion both in business as well as in private. She was an amazing woman, strikingly good-looking, skilled, powerful and very, very rich. Draeger's ideas impressed her, and she agreed to expand with a new branch: a corporation solely for the development of biological, medical and pharmaceutical technologies. It had become almost an instant success, greatly surpassing their expectations. But the universe they lived in, insecure and at war, was even more in need of potential new 'strategic advantages' than it was in need of medicine and cures. It was only a matter of months before the lady decided to give the new-founded, already prosperous branch a new direction. From then on success built on success: BioCore became the largest producer of biological and chemical warfare weapons in the Known Worlds.

"BioCore?" Beka frowned. "Weren't they the ones Abel messed around with?"

"The very same," Rommie confirmed dryly.

"And Paul's implication it it...?"

At that, Rommie took over the briefing from Harper:

Paul Musseveni himself remained an elusive figure during this period , sometimes vanishing from sight for months at a time, once for almost as long as one year, and never for less than at least three months, each time returning changed, sometimes aged far beyond the amount of time he had been gone, until about three years ago when he had disappeared completely. Jonah Draeger had never inquired on his whereabouts, and never asked when he resurfaced. During Musseveni's absences Draeger didn't communicate much with their other partner, who was herself an aloof, rather exclusive figure. They met only on official occasions or on the rare business business meeting that required her presence.

Already a successful company before Jonah Draeger's arrival, TechnoCore – with the support of all more or less stable societies of the post-Fall universe – became almost a monopolist regarding the development of new technologies; especially BioCore, the branch Draeger was in charge of. And then trouble struck: about four years after the Seefran's arrival in this universe rumors began to spread on an old, almost forgotten legend about a High Guard captain and a ship from old times revived and coming to rescue universe from itself, restoring peace, justice and the Commonwealth. Of course all dismissed it at first as some more of the usual messianic stuff floating around in harsh times, all that was but the people in charge of TechnoCore. Musseveni, Draeger and their companion knew better and began their preparations, spreading the company's activity out on more and more domains, enlarging their clientèle and hiding the departments most likely to become a questionable issue in the event of a Restored Commonwealth, like BioCore, away and putting them under the protection of the ones who had been there since immemorial Vedran times as a secret order, and were most likely to become something one again within the order Dylan Hunt and his crew were attempting to create: the Collectors.

It worked. With the Restored New Systems' Commonwealth in place and declaring – as they had expected – all technology for chemical and biological warfare illegal, BioCore remained safe and prosperous under the protection of the Collectors, who had infiltrated the fresh planetary federation that was emerging in the Three Galaxies. It became even more prosperous than before, since there were many worlds officially joining to obtain the protection of the new High Guard, but did not want to abide by all of its laws, particularly not the ones concerning military assets placed solely under the rule of the Senate, High Command and of the triumvirs.

The Collectors' protection proved highly effective. The Commonwealth had not been in place for more than a year when forces from within and from outside the young systems' organization – the Collectors among them – put it to the test. To everyone's amazement the newly created structure proved that it could bite and not just bark, when it stopped the Pyrian expansion at the battle of Samsara.

It was the Collectors belief that all they would need to do to defeat the enemies the future held in store for the Known Worlds would be to forge an alliance between the Dragan Empire and the Restored Commonwealth. It was obvious that Dylan Hunt would be an obstacle to this plan, that much was clear, so they gladly accepted the offer of Tyr Anasazi, who wanted to unite all Nietzschean prides and use his new might to force the High Guard captain into a treaty with him. What they didn't know was that the Kodiak's vision implied a 'small Nietzschean solution' – without the Dragan Empire. When the plan was put into action, their ignorance proved fatal: Dylan Hunt could not be moved to launch the final destruction against all Dragans living on Enga's Redoubt, which caused a permanent falling out with Anasazi, whose claim of being the reincarnation of the Nietzschean progenitor inspired most of prides to follow his lead. But not all of them. The battles between Dragans, the Commonwealth, all other Nietzscheans, Kalderans and whoever was out there and not happy about the New Commonwealth, left all sides considerably weaker and completely unable to face an enemy so formidable as the Abyss and its Magog on their own.

The only expectation of the Collectors that materialized as planned was Tyr Anasazi uniting if not all, at least enough Nietzschean prides. But his success caused them to make another tactical miscalculation: still wedded to the idea that the only hope against the Abyss would be a united front of the RNSC and Tyr's prides, they singled out Dylan Hunt as only obstacle to such a union.

With most of the official Commonwealth completely unaware of their plans, let alone that its most symbolic figure had become the target for a conspiracy, the whole thing turned – as was to be expected – into a bloody mess. A newly elected triumvir went after Tyr Anasazi, ordering him to be captured. In the end it came to a showdown between him and the officers of the _Andromeda Ascendant_, a showdown the Nietzschean leader did not survive. With the last Kodiak killed, the Nietzschean prides fell apart again – and with them the Collectors' grand strategy for the war with the Magog. Defeated twice in their plans by the same man, the Collectors enrolled some important help among the Commonwealth's political elite to rid themselves of him. In the end that failed, too – but the amount of time lost on all those machinations was considerable.

With an annoyed wheeze, Beka jumped to her feet and began to pace.

"You've got to be kidding!" she exclaimed outraged.

"Well, Beka, all of this is not exactly news..." Rommie objected calmly.

"Oh, there is SOME news, Rommie. Musseveni, Jonah, the way they are entangled with BioCore... That's news all right according to my book!"

"There's more..."

"**Of course** there's more!" the pilot snorted angrily. Rommie threw a cautious look at Beka's brother.

"Rafe?" she asked tentatively. The man nodded and took a deep breath before taking over from her and simply delivering the next bit to his sister in one big rush of words.

"Hm, yes... Listen, Beka: it turned out that over the years TechnoCore and then BioCore as well had been heavily supporting whatever endeavor the Collectors saw fit to support. However, the most important figure in this wasn't Musseveni – nor Draeger, who came rather late into the game. The main player is Musseveni's companion..." He hesitated.

"Ah yes, the mysterious lady!" his sister exclaimed ironically. "_Cherchez la femme_! How much more of a cliché is this going to get?"

Raphael still seemed to search for words.

"Well? Who is she?" She waited an instant. "Rafe? Her name - and make it today, please!"

"Senator Thalia of Oudekerk, divorced Valentine, highly influential in both the Than Empire as well as later on with the New Commonwealth."

"What?"

The silence was deafening as Rafe began to explain how, once the new alliance had emerged, she had publicly shed all ties binding her to TechnoCore like a superfluous skin, while still keping her position as well as the control over all its activities and assets behind the new retirement-façade she had built up for herself. A façade that had provided her with the opportunity to play whatever game she wanted far more freely than before.

Exactly what her interest was in all of this, Draeger was unable to tell them. Musseveni cared about his race ruling supreme and even more efficiently than before; Drager himself had cared about power and money and to some degree revenge. Thalia though seemed to care mainly about satisfying her family's whims and also some undefined revisionist urges. What those were precisely had remained obscure.

This was as far as the summarization had gone. Beka seemed to have become petrified during the latest revelations. It was obvious to everyone that she was no longer paying attention. Helpless, Harper exchanged looks with Rommie and Doyle, who were themselves throwing furtive glances at Rafe.

The dark-haired man gazed at his sister, oblivious to anyone else present in the room. He waited, almost holding his breath, for her reaction. When none came, he waited some more, then cleared his throat.

"Beka?"

"Hmm?"

"Beka!"

"Yes, Rafe! I can hear you."

"Well, why don't you say something?"

She didn't react.

"Beka!"

At long last the woman lifted her eyes, that had been fixed at a spot on the table, to look at him. A twist – of disgust, rage, of hatred? – curled up her lip.

"Go figure!" she finally exclaimed in an eerily even tone. "Mommy dearest!"

"Yeah…" Rafe sighed. "Yeah, she's back."

"Back? By the sound of it she never was really gone."


	48. Chapter 47

Thanks a lot, squid109, for the great help with the beta.

**Chapter 47**

"Never mess with the timeline."

Beka's voice held an almost dreamy quality in the silence following the Valentine siblings' short exchange.

"What?" Rafe sounded slightly nonplussed.

"Never mess with the timeline…" she repeated, tearing her eyes away from the imaginary point she had been fixing and focusing on him anew. "That's what Dad always said. Over and over again. I thought it was some joke I didn't get or something. But now I'm wondering, what if he knew that Mother and Paul Musseveni had ended up together?"

A pensive look crossed his face and she frowned, recognizing it.

"What? There's more to it, right? What are you not telling me?"

Her brother sighed weakly.

"Yes, Dad probably knew. You see, Paul Musseveni is…" He hesitated.

"Yes?" Beka urged him. "Go on!"

"He's Paul Montrose."

The blonde furrowed her brow.

"Who's Paul Montrose?"

It was Rafe's turn to be puzzled.

"You mean, you don't remember?"

She shook her head. Annoyed, the dark-haired man pressed his lips together for a second, then harrumphed.

"Well, he was…" Again he seemed to stumble, but then continued on. "He was Dad's and Sid's partner. He took off with a lot of money after they scored on a particularly good deal about six months before Mother left."

Beka's eyes narrowed. She seemed to lose herself once more in thought, but then continued:

"I didn't know about Montrose… I… I actually don't remember that much from the time before she left – just us and Dad and Mother."

"Well, Sid told us a bit about Paul," Harper fell in. "Apparently he had been a member of the Sinti Science Academy, but got thrown out for performing genetic experiments on just about all species in the Known Worlds…"

"Yes well," Beka commented dryly, "he seems to have an… affinity to that."

"Anyway," the engineer continued, "when the Perseids found out, they threw him out, and a couple of months later he joined the _Maru…_"

The freighter's captain nodded.

"How?" she then asked.

"I… I don't know exactly. As far as I remember – but this is rather blurry – he was an old friend of Mother's… Childhood friends or something…"

"Childhood?" his sister echoed. "That's nonsense. Paul Musseveni was born on Terra ages ago and…" Her voice trailed off. Again they all sank into a thoughtful, uneasy silence.

Rafe cleared his throat:

"There's something more…"

A cautious expression appeared on Beka's face:

"Great…" she sighed. "What?" she then inquired.

"More precisely: there is someone else involved…" Rafe elaborated.

"I'm all ears."

"Tabea…"

"Who?"

"Tabea Musseveni, out of Thalia by Paul."

Rebekkah froze up. Harper and Doyle were watching her wide-eyed, while Rafe seemed hardly breathing as they awaited her reaction. When it finally came, its sharpness surprised them all:

"How old is she?"

"It fits," Rafe answered.

"So you met her."

"We all did. She was planted as a spy on me when I was on Myrmidon. Something seemed odd about her from the very beginning. So I brought her along," Raphael explained. "Rhade and Harper agreed with my feelings about her and laid a trap for her…"

"What trap?"

"They gave her a fake copy of what she actually wanted – and she came clear about who she was and why she had come aboard…"

"And?"

"The slipstream scout," Harper took over from Rafe. Beka smirked.

"It figures. Paul must have some doubts about how well his flash-bots are going to work out in the end. And with the Route of Ages destroyed and that Crimean portal the only means to reach Ral Parthia…" She left the sentence unfinished. "Damn'," she cursed after a brief pause, "I'm losing my way with all this hopping around through space and time…"

"Messing with the timeline…" Rommie agreed. " I'm beginning to feel as if all my circuits are slowly starting to melt down."

"What do you mean: slowly?" Doyle threw in, shaking her head ironically. "Ever since my first encounter with it – when Argent and his goons showed up – I really, really loath everything even remotely related to it…"

Beka nodded, an understanding smile on her lips.

"Rafe, Harper: you spoke with Sid. What did he tell you on Thalia?"

Both men shook their heads.

"Nothing," Harper answered. "It was a bit strange. He was cooperative on Paul, but your mother… He won't talk about her, Beka…"

A harsh, steely expression appeared on her face.

"Rommie, do me a favor: go fetch Mr. Profit and bring him aboard, will you?"

"When?"

"Oh, I think right now would be perfect."

"Aye, Captain."

The avatar of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ jumped to her feet and walked out without delay.

"Beka, he won't talk," Rafe insisted tiredly.

"Oh, don't worry about it. He'll talk all right, you'll see." Brother and sister locked eyes as another thin smile appeared on the woman's lips. "He. Will. Talk," she concluded softly. "And I suggest we continue this topic once we know more from Sid. Now: moving on… What else do we have on the Dragans?"

"The bots…?" Harper inserted.

"Right," Beka said. "Like I already mentioned: I don't really think that whatever Musseveni is trying to achieve in this field will be really successful. Or even if the tests he performed on…" she swallowed briefly, but then continued in a cold tone, "on us will really help him. We all reacted differently, with me being by far his most successful… lab rat. Most Dragans he experimented with died in that slip-string on the way to or from Ral Parthia – or couldn't battle the addiction effects."

"But you could…" Doyle commented, sounding a bit doubtful.

Beka shrugged.

"Yes, I could. But then again, while I may not understand the scientific side of it all, I understand flash better than Musseveni ever will. The physical addiction… that's not the real problem. The emotional and mental dependency on it is. You can keep the physical side of it in check if you have really good reasons to do so. I did well with the flash-bots because I was worried sick about the _Maru _and Rafe and…" Her voice dried out. Aware that they were all staring at her, waiting for her to continue and more interested in what she had to tell them than they had been during their previous conversation, she tried to speak up again, but failed. Annoyed, she shook her head and cleared her throat.

"Anyway," she then went on with a visible effort, "afterwards I… I was just… enraged… I… blocked… I mean…" She stopped again, aware that she was rambling.

"Beka…" Harper tried to help her out, his face and tone softening up.

"No!" She lifted her hand as if wanting to fend him off. "Look," she began anew, "what I'm trying to say is: all of Paul's glorious attempts will not lead to anything, at least I don't believe it. And if they do: it won't happen as soon and as fast as he wants."

"What about Dylan?" Doyle threw in, her voice matching Beka's level of detachment.

"What about him?" the other woman asked.

"Well, they tested it on him too, didn't they?"

"Not exactly. I accidentally injected him with them. It nearly killed him. Musseveni and Draeger managed to save him and certainly collected the data his body provided, but I'm not sure if they could make sense of it. Jonah said that his DNA-structure was different from anything he had ever come across previously. They hoped to gain a world of knowledge from it, but they would have needed a lot more time to… study him, so now that he's gone…"

"Well," Doyle objected slowly, "as far as this is concerned, he might not be gone enough…"

All color fled from the other woman's face.

"Explain," she ordered quietly.

"They… They have his body, Beka."

"Who does?"

The blonde android's shoulders slumped.

"The Dragans… Musseveni…"

"You... You never found him? You never actually got his body? So then how do you know he is gone and not just missing? Have you checked?" The woman's voice, at first hesitant, became firmer and firmer, rising with each word, while she herself jumped up and began to pace, oblivious to the others frowning at her outburst.

"No, Beka, we didn't check," Doyle replied in a brittle tone. "We all just ran away the minute we began to suspect that something was wrong with Dylan. And when he didn't return... We merely accepted that we couldn't find him, returned to Commonwealth space, leaned back, had a beer and refused to look into the matter anymore," the anger and sarcasm in her tone mounting with each word she spoke.

The pilot stopped in her tracks, watching her through narrowed eyes.

"Okay, I'm sorry. I was out of line. I'm sure you did your best to find him. Still if you didn't, one question remains: how do you know?"

No-one answered her. With troubled, almost pleading eyes Beka looked from one of them to the other, but the silence persisted. She returned her focus on the android.

"Doyle, tell me."

"I can do better than that. I can show you, Beka…"


	49. Chapter 48

Squid109, thank you for going through all that beta-trouble with this.

**Chapter 48**

"Doyle, no!"

"And why not, Rafe? Dylan died because of her. I think she owes him to face just what happened to..."

"Harper!" Beka's brother interrupted the android, throwing the Terran a pleading look. "Harper, please! This is totally unnecessary!"

" Is it?" The Seefran avatar refused to let him silence her. "I haven't known any of you – even Harper – for as long as you have known each other. But I've come to know you well enough to have my doubts about this 'making it all easy for Beka'-strategy. Because, you see, on Seefra and even afterwards, this was Dylan's main way to handle things with her. And look what it got him!"

"Harper!" Rafe repeated, continuing to ignore the android.

The engineer did not respond. He simply sat there, staring at Beka, refusing to divert his attention from her.

"You're wrong, Doyle," he said, still looking at the _Maru_'s captain. "He might have died for her, but he didn't die because of her..."

"Semantics," the android dismissed his objection.

"Maybe..." Harper admitted pensively. "But then again: maybe not... I wonder," he continued with a small sigh finally looking away from Beka, who had herself been returning his gaze steadfastly, "could you two give us a minute alone?"

"There's no time for... bonding, Harper," Beka objected harshly.

"Don't worry, I won't take long... **Captain **Valentine," Harper replied stressing her title. Without another word both Rafe and Doyle stood up and left the room.

The room fell so quiet that the always present (yet faint to the point of non-existence) sounds of the ship seemed to engulf the two remaining occupants. They kept eyeing each other in an uncertain, tense sort of way, like two boxers seated in opposite corners before entering the match of their life.

"Is it true?" Harper finally asked in a brittle tone.

"Is what true?"

"What Rhade said..."

Beka snorted derisively.

"Oh, but Rhade had so much to say... Some of it is bound to be true – by the sheer amount of it, right?"

"Quit playing, Beka! Is it true that you knew?"

She loudly drew air through her nostrils, while her mouth set a grim line. She tried to hold on to his eyes, to stare him down but finally she was the one to avert her gaze. She murmured something.

"What? I didn't catch that..."

"I said, it doesn't matter..." Beka repeated louder. Harper's face reddened.

"You're wrong. It does matter. It matters to **me**," he insisted in a strangled voice.

"Why?"

"Because. I need to know, Beka. You see, Dylan is gone and now I'm back to square one, stuck with you for better or for worse. I've seen Dylan, Beka, seen him do a number of pretty foolish things when you disappeared. He faked files, covered up for you, lied to High Command, flew alone to a Dragan stronghold, and then lost his life in the process, trying to get you back. But he didn't turn around and run..."

"Oh, so that's what this is all about? You're back to being stuck with me and afraid that I don't have the stature to replace 'Daddy'? Well, I'm sorry, Harper – I never said I had it, there's no way I can make up for him, and I'm very afraid that you will have to come to terms with all the shortcomings of your new commanding officer..."

"Shit, Beka, this isn't about commanding officers. This is about you and me and him and what we are..."

"We are... estranged, Harper, that's what we are. And he's dead. I'm not. Which means that, no mater in how many ways he might have been much better than I am, at present I do pose at least one considerable strategic advantage. So why don't we just skip the part of who's to blame for what and..."

"This isn't about blame, and I still need to know... I want you to talk, here, right now, about you and why..."

"Leave it, Harper, you don't want me to talk about me. You want me to talk about him. Well, there's a time and place for everything – including the talk you want. But right now I'm not going to discuss him with you or anybody else, do you understand me?"

Her eyes drilled into his, challenging him to back off, but he refused to retreat.

"Dylan," he said softly.

A puzzled expression appeared on the woman's face.

"What?"

"Dylan," he repeated even softer. "**His** name is Dylan..."

"Good thing you mentioned it. I might have forgotten otherwise..."

"I don't know... Maybe you might have," he retorted. "Because, you see, Beka, you haven't called him once by name since you got back." By now the look in his eyes matched hers in harshness. "Say it, Beka! Say it!" he challenged her. From his seat he could see her chest rising and falling in agitated breathing, while her jaws' muscles were grinding.

"Dy-lan," she finally muttered. And then louder, clearer: "Dylan. There. I've said it. Did it change anything? Did it make him miraculously appear in our midst? Is he any less dead, now that I've said his name?"

Again their eyes locked in a silent contest. A contest that ended when Harper jumped up with a roar, throwing his chair backwards and turning away from her.

"Seamus..." Beka tried to talk to him, sounding almost pleading.

"No!" he exclaimed, outrage in his voice. "You knew! Rhade was right! You knew... and turned your back on us! Why, Beka? Did it help you? Because it sure as hell didn't help us. **Me**!" Still tense with fury, he turned around to face her anew. "Well, did it help you?"

"At first," she answered him quietly. Then sighed and let herself slump into her chair. She tried to speak, but her voice seemed to catch in her throat. It took her a few attempts, before she managed a hoarse, sobbing croak. "Yeah, it helped... As long as it lasted..." Her eyes looked for him, pleading, brimmed by tears, hurting, fearful.

"I... I don't get it..." he finally admitted, falling down into his own seat.

She drew in a shuddered breath.

"I was always lucky. Over the past years... " She pressed her lips together, but then continued: "I was lucky. Mostly. The few times when I wasn't though... Whenever I woke up on med-deck, on the _Maru_... The first one by my side was always Dylan..."

"Yeah, same with me..."

"The only time when I found myself without him was after we had taken the shot from the PSW from the Magog..." She smiled sadly. "He wasn't then by my side because he was lying a bit further away, dead... I had to revive him. Then I passed out. Next time I came to on med-deck, he still wasn't there. He had gone into cardiac arrest again and Trance was working on him. The only two times when he wasn't there..." Her voice trailed off and faded. The back of her hand came up and wiped her nose, while her eyes lost themselves to some imaginary point. "When I found myself back on the _Maru _after Illion, when he wasn't there, when he didn't come..."

Her eyes returned to the face of the young man across the table.

"When day passed after day without him coming... There weren't really many options I had to choose from. So I chose the one most... survivable. It was... it was so much easier to hate rather than mourn him..." she finished, once more in a pleading voice.

The Terran swallowed, feeling the tears he had been biting back ever since he had first sat his eyes on her finally spill over and run down his cheeks. Seeing it, she shook her head in distress.

"I'm sorry, Seamus. I... am so sorry that I couldn't... "

"It's okay. It's all right, at least that I can understand... somehow."

She nodded, relieved. For some brief moments they sat in companionable silence, but then Beka stood up and approached him, placing a hand gently on his shoulder.

"Shall we bring Rafe and Doyle back?" she asked. The young man nodded, one of his hands briefly patting hers. He remained seated while she went to the doors, that opened soundlessly. Outside both Doyle and Rafe waited, leaning against the bulkhead.

"Doyle, what do you have to show me?"

"Beka..." her brother protested.

"No, Rafe. Doyle is right. If this is something so horrible you feel that you have to keep it from me... then I **must **see it."

It was Doyle's turn to hesitate.

"Harper?" she inquired doubtfully.

He sighed and nodded to her. Then he stood up, moved to Beka's side and sat down next to her, tightly gripping her hand.

"Go ahead, Doyle," he motioned.

Raphael Valentine stepped up behind his sister and placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. With another doubtful look at the three humans by her side, Doyle turned around.

_"Andromeda_, play the Dragan news program..." She didn't bother to specify, as if there only was one.

"News?" Beka inquired, not understanding, as her eyes turned to the monitor at the far side of the room.

"They had it broadcast throughout the Known Worlds," Doyle told her in a toneless voice.

And then it came, a whole documentary, at least ten minutes long about how the Dragans had finally hunted and brought down the one they had considered to have been the most formidable foe the kludges had ever thrown at them. He had at first managed to outrun them, to trick them, get them away from the _Maru _and the _Andromeda_; but the countless scouts and hunters tracked him down, had closed all his escape routes, forced him back to Illion and right into Myrmidon's planetary defense system. By then he must have been exhausted, worn out, like a fox with too many dogs on its tail for too long. The fighter was hit; he ejected, the small cockpit damaged, tumbling out of control. The Dragans had recorded it all, the hunt, the hits, the crash... and the fire.

Then they had removed him from the ruins of his craft. It was undoubtedly him, his head had somehow remained undamaged. But the entire right side below his neck was nothing more than an inform, burnt mass of tissue, leather and fabric melted into the bleeding, blister covered, raw flesh. The docu ended, with a last image of Dylan Hunt shown on a huge vid-screen to an enormous mass of people, a Dylan Hunt stretched out on some kind of metal table in what looked like a morgue of some sort, stripped of his clothes, and cleaned, with the cameras scrupulously registering the burns and injuries, cuts and lacerations in maddening detail to the cheers of the crowd.

Unaware that she was gripping Harper's hand as tightly as if she meant to break every single bone in it, Beka stared wide-eyed and bone-white at the screen, long after it had turned black again. After a while Harper, who had kept his eyes averted from the gruesome show, tried to return the grip, but found his fingers numb. He moistened his lips.

"I'm sorry you had to see this... But... I think you need to... You need to know that..."

"Yes," Beka agreed, finally releasing his hand and turning to him. "Yes, I had to see it." Rafe came around to her side and shook his head.

"I... I don't get it... To this day I don't get it." he said. "I know that they wanted him dead. We all knew. But why did they... Why did they put him up like..."

"Back in the old days on Earth," Harper replied tonelessly, "our old kings and princes used to hang the bodies of their slain enemies from the walls of their castles..." He shut his eyes. "But you're right," he continued, "I don't get it either why they had to do this..."

Beka looked at him, a knowing expression on her face. She had been in bad shape then, but she remembered clearly both Jonah's scandalized question as well as Musseveni's cool answer.

_„Why did you have to push her that far?"_

_„Because I can."_

She cleared her throat.

"They did it because they could. Doyle, get the triumvirs. Rafe, wait for Rommie and bring Sid to me as soon as she brings him in. Harper, I need you to get to work. Remember Witchhead? I think I could use some anti-proton catalysed fusion some time from now... As well as that miraculous grav-converter you built to open the tunnel..."

Harper's eyes widened in surprise.

"Boss, you don't remember, but when we switched it on the last time..."

"I know. I know, Harper. But it did open the damned tunnel," she interrupted him sternly. "Get me that thing. And while you're at it: I also need some Rosies."

"What? **Some **Rosies?" he echoed. "How many?"

Beka stood up and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know," she shrugged casually. "A few. As many as you can get me; we don't have much time, really..."

He nodded, silenced, a frightened look coming into his eyes. Beka merely nodded reassuringly and turned to leave. She was already outside the room when Rafe's voice called out.

"Beka, what are you planning? What are you going to do?"

She stopped and turned to face him. Her face looked calm, almost serene, as was her tone when she spoke:

"I'll do the one thing I am nearly as good at as piloting: I'm going to kill them, Rafe. I'm going to kill them all."

"All?" he echoed, aghast. "But, Beka... All of them? Why?"

She smiled again a thin, cool, cruel smile.

"Because I can, Rafe. Simply because I can."


	50. Chapter 49

Thanks a lot, Squid109, for your constant support with this.

**Chapter 49**

"So I take it the evidence we managed to put forward convinced you, Captain," Tri-Lorn brought forward in a satisfied tone.

Seated on his right, Tri-Rhade looked far less pleased, surprisingly enough though not altogether as opposed to the idea of seeing Captain Rebekkah Valentine accepting the task they had foreseen for her as his objections mere hours ago might have suggested. The only one appearing less ready to accept Beka's decision unquestioningly seemed Tri-Ortiz, who kept weighing the slender woman in front of her out of dark, impervious eyes. Before she could have answered, Tri-Ortiz leaned forward.

"Before we go into detail, Captain Valentine," she asked in her well-tempered, a bit rough voice, "may I ask what exactly about it convinced you? The amount, the quality, the way it matched with your own experiences or…" she hesitated slightly, "maybe something else entirely?"

Again, Beka hesitated. It was Rhade who broke the silence..

"Did they…" his voice wavered, but his eyes remained fixed on his former crew-mate, "did they… I mean, did they show you everything?"

"Yes," the _Maru_'s captain answered him quietly, "they showed me everything, Rhade." For a brief moment the two of them locked eyes, a wordless communication passing between them, and then the Nietzschean nodded. The gentle, raspy softness in his voice when he answered took everyone present, including himself, by surprise.

"I'm terribly sorry, Beka."

"I know, Rhade. So am I."

"Of course," he acquiesced quietly.

"I don't mean to be rude, Captain," Tri-Lorn cut into the exchange between the two friends, "but when can we expect you to outline a first strategy of how you propose to deal with the Drago-Khatzov?"

"Just a moment, Tri-Lorn," Isabella Ortiz interrupted the tall man, "I really would first like an answer to my question. What convinced you, Captain, to agree to a preemptive strike?"

Calmly, Beka met her gaze head on.

"I think you know the answer," she answered even-voiced.

The older woman scrutinized her briefly, then pressed her lips together.

"Revenge? I thought you said that this would go against..."

Beka shook her head, looking down on her fingers tightly clasped together.

"No revenge," she said, swallowing a lump that suddenly seemed to have formed in her throat. "This isn't about them killing Dylan, or about the way they hunted him down. It's not even about the way they used him before – as a lab-rat, a pawn, a…" Her voice trailed off, but then she lifted her head and allowed them all to see her eyes: they were sad and grieving, but beyond that there was a horrified, pained outrage in them.

"He's always been the one enemy they hated most, and to Paul Musseveni he must have seemed somehow like the Vedrans' ultimate defiance or mockery of him. That – given the chance – they did all they could to harm and hurt and kill him… I can understand that. It's not what he'd have done, it's not what I'd have done, but maybe we were wrong. No, not maybe... We **were **wrong! What we perceive as mercy – to them it's only weakness. The way they put him on the display though, for the masses to cheer his death, cheer the mutilated corpse… And they **were **cheering… **Cheering**!" Beka stressed disgusted, but then pressed a hand against her lips, fighting for composure. "Had they not been shown but given the body, they would have ripped him apart to feast on him…"

"Beka," Rhade cut in, but she didn't let him continue.

Tossing her head back determinedly Rebekkah Valentine pushed herself away from the table and straightened up, standing tall before them:

"No, Rhade! Don't bother!" she ordered him to silence. "A preemptive strike goes against everything he stood for, goes against my belief, against the very principles this Commonwealth is about, but there are times…" For a moment she seemed to listen to some inner voice, then continued in a firm, decisive tone: "… there are times when a civilization must be prepared to compromise on its own principles if it wants to survive. That's not a lame excuse, it's a basic truth – the **one **truth that Dylan always refused to face, at Hephaistos, at Enga's Redoubt, at Arkology… And one of the last times we spoke, I told him that I will not stand by to see history repeating itself."

Tossing her head back determinedly Rebekkah Valentine pushed herself away from the table and straightened up, standing tall before them:

"I hereby accept command of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ and the Commonwealth fleet. My officers have already received their orders and are currently working on an appropriate strategy that we will present to you by this time tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me: gentlemen, Ma'am – I've pressing business to attend to."

She turned around to leave, but then hesitated and returned to them:

"Tri-Rhade, I wonder…"

She didn't have to continue. Before she could go on he had risen to his feet.

"Matriarch," he said, "I hereby step down from my duties as triumvir for the time being, requesting permission to come aboard."

Beka nodded, and then for the first time in her life saluted.

"Permission granted, Commander, welcome aboard!"

"Commander Rhade reporting for duty, Ma'am!"

-

Seated on a narrow, most uncomfortable stool, Sid Barry was doing his best to appear far more at ease than he was actually feeling. Eyeing both his niece and the impressive Nietzschean next to her, and wearily and painfully aware of the slender, yet as he by now knew menacingly tough presence of the _Andromeda_'s avatar behind him, the older man was frantically trying to figure out what this could possibly be all about.

"Rocket…" he began.

"Shut up, Sid," Beka ordered sharply. "I want you to listen and listen well. Keep in mind that all we are about to talk about is confidential. Strictly confidential. Understood?"

"Of course."

"Good. Have you seen the Dragans' broadcast on Dylan's death?"

He swallowed, nodding briefly. Was this about the fact that he hadn't told her, hadn't forced her to…?

"Beka, you weren't…"

"No, I wasn't," she interrupted him impatiently, "but that's not what this is all about. Listen, Sid, the thing is this: behind all these machinations there has been a certain Paul Musseveni, the very same guy who actually fathered Drago Musseveni. And we've identified him as Paul Montrose."

"What?" Sam Profit actually flinched at this piece of information, would have gotten up from his seat, had it not been for the , slender hand on his shoulder pressing him back down.

"Sit down!" Rommie ordered.

"Yeah…" Beka said in an ironic tone, her hand going up with a raised index finger, obviously motioning Rommie to hold back. "So you see, whatever restraints there might have been previously preventing you from telling us all you knew about him…"

"I told you all I knew!" the tycoon protested.

Her eyes narrowed, then after a moment she nodded.

"Very well. And Mother…?"

"Your mother? Thalia? What about her?"

"She and Montrose…"

"Beka, there was no connection between them. Your father and I… we checked, but the truth is she left because of Ignatius, not because of someone else…"

"You didn't check well enough," the young woman disagreed. "She **did **leave because of him. And even if not, in the end they ended up together. How was her relationship with him aboard the _Maru_?"

Sid shrugged.

"More or less the same as with everyone else but with Ignatius and you kids: she was distant, arrogant, ironic, haughty…"

"All right, all right," Beka interrupted, "I get the picture. There was no love lost between the two of you…"

"There never was much love lost between Thalia and no matter whom. She always struck me as odd, ever since your father brought her along."

"Yes, Dad… Where did he meet her?"

"We… Hmm..." he harrumphed, obviously thinking about what and how much he was supposed to tell her.

"Spit it out, Mr. Profit," Telemachus Rhade growled lowly, who had so far confined himself to a silently menacing presence.

"Very well. One of Nat's and my fist jobs after finishing the _Maru _was to establish a trading route for the Than past the FTA. It… it was your mother, by then already a prominent, albeit young figure within the human elite of the Than Empire, who picked us up for the job after meeting your father. It was dangerous, clandestine and very, very well paid. We succeeded, she was pleased and… came to stay. I must have been a fool not to realize previously that Nat and her were… together. Anyway, from then on she was part of the family, provided us with many equally lucrative – and slightly illegal – assignments for the Than, who were at that time trying to build themselves a privateer-fleet…

"For which you were ideally suited…" Beka interrupted.

"For which we were indeed ideally suited, Rocket," Sid confirmed with a grin. "To this day I don't know what prompted your mother to join us…" Seeing her taking a breath to argue, Sid made a defensive gesture. "No, don't get me wrong! She was quite crazy about your Dad – he was young and daring and a lot of fun. And he was also crazy about her. Still: what we had to offer was a far cry from the life she was used to as a 'Royal Daughter' of the House of Sangre," he smirked. "But it worked out – until Rafe came along…"

"Rafe?" Beka frowned.

"Yes, Rafe. See, it turned out the valiant pirate that was your father had very precise ideas about how a family should work, how his children were to be brought up. Once you came along, the fun was over: he placed her on Raia, in a sumptuous mansion with an army of servants; the costs were astronomical, the jobs we had to take to pay for it all became more and more risky – especially since your mother, who initiated most of the deals still demanded a third of the shares, although she was no longer coming along…"

"What?" Beka exclaimed. "But with her and Dad being together… and her being royal and all that…" She shook her head. "I… I don't get it…"

Sid smiled thinly.

"That's like hearing your father talk. Oh, she was royal all right, there wasn't a single un-aristocratic bone in all of her. Yet aristocrats, my dear girl, are nothing but the ones who started to steal and murder first, were far more talented at it and managed to hold on to their spoils of war for longer than all others. Greed, ruthlessness, cruelty is something we all learn eventually – some better than the others, some easier, some the hard way. But in people like your mother, Beka… It's bred into them from the first breath they take. We mere plebeians really can't compete with them…"

"And what Dad had to offer was not enough…" Beka said.

"A classical misunderstanding," Sid confirmed. "He wanted wealth for fun. She wanted wealth for power… By the time you were born, their marriage had already been gone to the dogs, Ignatius just refused to admit it." Sid sighed. "When you were three, she was fed up with a tranquil life in luxury. She forced Ignatius to bring her back aboard. She brought along the two of you ... and Paul Montrose. She said they had grown up together…"

"That can't be," Rommie inserted dryly. "Montrose grew up on Earth, stole Vedran tesseracting technology to end up now…"

Again Sid Barry made a futile attempt to stand up, again the avatar forced him from back onto the stool.

"Well?" Beka inquired impatiently.

Her uncle shook his head.

"I don't now… I really don't know, Beka. I didn't like the guy. I didn't like Thalia either for that matter. I tried to investigate him, but she told me to back off. When I didn't… There were some goons on a drift. I ended up in hospital for two weeks. Whether they were hers or his I have no idea. Because afterwards I backed off. We might have stood a chance, had Ignatius been with me on this one, but by then he was doing everything just to please your mother… I backed off," he repeated. "It went well – for years nothing happened. Life became more difficult, but that was true for everyone in the universe… And then, after a particularly lucrative job, Montrose took off with all the cash we had."

"And Mother?"

"She stayed, was furious, contemptuous… Things went south, got ugly between her and Ignatius – well, uglier than they were already. She left, too. And that was the last straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, as far as your father was concerned…"

"You lost both her and Montrose's tracks?"

"We didn't even connect them. But losing Thalia's track… We couldn't have done it even if we wanted. She went back to her old life as if nothing had happened, as if the thirteen years she had spent with Nat never existed."

"A remarkable woman," Rhade observed pensively.

"If that's how you want to put it…" Sid dismissed the Nietzschean's words, noticing the dirty look Beka was throwing at him. "I'm sorry, Rocket, I really don't know more; only that I've never met with someone colder, more calculating and more deadly accurate in those calculations than your mother. I always tried to keep out of her way, Rebekkah, and I strongly advise you to do the same…"

"Yeah, thanks," Beka answered harshly. "Only: I can't, Sid. It turns out she's been plotting against the Commonwealth from the very start, in one way or the other. It turns out she and the 'founding father'…" She didn't let the angry sneeze of Rhade's interrupt her. "… of the Nietzschean race have a lot more in common than any of us likes. They're building an empire, an army and a fleet. And we don't know what for…"

"They're Dragans, Beka," Rhade inserted tiredly, as if this could explain everything. She nodded.

"Exactly. Which means that I am unwilling to wait until I find out what they want all this for. " She sighed. "Okay, Sid. Thank you. I would appreciate it if you remained onboard. The _Andromeda _will set out for Terrazed immediately. In case Argosy intelligence comes up with more relevant intel, I'd like you close by, maybe you can help…"

"Rebekkah, I can't just leave _Transgalactica _like that and I don't think…"

She leaned forward across the table.

"Sid, maybe I didn't make myself clear on this one. I'm not asking, I'm telling you how we all will play this. Regardless of what you think: you stay. I already contacted dear Miss Sabrina, she knows what she has to do. And that's that, Mr. Profit. Welcome aboard, you've just joined the Commonwealth fleet."

"Beka," he protested outraged, "I have never been around anything military."

She smiled.

"Don't worry! It'll grow on you…"

A/N: I'm not entirely sure that this isn't actually a quote, but I truly can't remember where it is from. It sort of sounds like one, but I couldn't think of a better wording.


	51. Chapter 50

Many, many thanks for the beta, squid109.

**Chapter 50**

"_Andromeda_?"

"Yes, Captain?" The hologram appeared immediately right in front of Beka.

"I want to see you in my office, once you've taken care of Mr. Profit's 'accommodations' on V-deck. I have given Rhade leave to take care of his affairs on Terrazed and talk to his family."

"My avatar is already on her way to the captain's room, but…"

"Yes?" Beka asked, leaving the interrogation chamber.

"Doyle's already there, wanting to speak to you, Beka. I… I still can call you Beka, right?" the ship's voice rang above her.

_Andromeda_'s new captain, rushing through the corridors leading from the sparse interrogation rooms located near the brig to the upper decks, had to smile.

"What? Do you think the new title got to my head already? Of course you can call me…" Her face clouded over and she swallowed hard. "In fact, I would prefer it for you to call me Beka… I wish…" She didn't finish. She didn't really have to. They both knew what she wished for. _Andromeda _could relate.

Beka cleared her throat:

"What does Doyle want to see me about? Do you know that?"

"No," her ship answered crisply. "We're not so close anymore as we once were."

"I know," her new captain told her. "_Andromeda_, I was gone for a time, but… I still know everything. You don't have to fill me in like a newbie."

"I'm sorry."

"No, **I **am sorry." She sighed. "It seems almost as if I'm doing nothing else but apologize to everyone since I got back…"

The ship didn't answer. Beka sighed anew. _Protocol_, she thought tiredly. _She just can't tell me straight that she agrees and that, after all, I have a lot to be sorry and apologize for.  
_

She entered the captain's room at a pace meant to demonstrate to Doyle both her determination with assuming command as well as a certain disposition to let bygones be bygones.

"Doyle," she greeted the Seefrane, sitting down behind the desk while trying to make her voice sound firm but friendly.

"Beka!"

To her amazement she saw the spectacular blonde shift around in her seat uncomfortably. She smiled, hoping that it would make Doyle feel more at ease.

"_Andromeda _told me you wanted to see me, but she couldn't say what it's all about. What can I do for you?"

"Beka, I was wondering… Would you mind if I would… well, you know… stay around for all there is to come…?"

_Andromeda_'s new captain furrowed her brow, blinking.

"Are you officially requesting transfer back to the _Andromeda Ascendant_?"

"Yes."

"What about Tarn Vedra?"

"I… When I last left I gave them enough instructions to keep everyone busy for quite a while…"

"I see." Beka studied the young woman in front of her thoughtfully. "But there will be a fight, Doyle. A huge one – and I can't guarantee that we all will come out of it unharmed."

Doyle pressed her lips together.

"I didn't ask for a guarantee…"

"I know," Beka acquiesced. "However: I can't help wondering about what happened with 'I fight for what I love'…"

"It's still valid."

Beka nodded slowly.

"I think I understand. But do you think you can do it?"

"'Do it'? Are you expressing doubts about my ability to serve aboard a warship?"

The woman shook her head.

"I am expressing doubts about your ability to serve under my command. Don't get me wrong," Beka hurried to soften her statement upon seeing Doyle's deepening frown, "I know it worked previously, but then Dylan was there between the two of us to… somewhat alleviate the effects of our various points of friction. With him gone, though – and in view of your objections to my person…"

"Beka, I already said I'm sorry…"

"No, Doyle, you misunderstand," the captain stressed, "I don't mind the things you said, they were more than justified. I am just wondering whether you can move on from there…"

"Did you ask Rommie and Rhade about this, too?" the android inquired a bit insinuatingly.

Beka shook her head, an understanding smile on her lips.

"I'm Rhade's matriarch, Doyle," she answered quietly, "and Rommie and I go back a long, long way…"

"And yet, it was me volunteering to go to Myrmidon and get you out…" the Seefrane replied sharply.

Rebekkah Valentine's eyes widened. From her expression it was clear that she was more than surprised.

"You?"

"Yes, me. How did you think you got off that damned planet?"

"I… I didn't… I never knew… I thought Jonah got Dylan and me…"

"Oh , Jonah got you out of there, all right. But if I hadn't arrived, Dylan would have been left behind…" Angrily Doyle swung her head, sending her mane flying. "Didn't you even bother to access the _Maru_'s logs to see…"

"No, I didn't," the woman interrupted. She spent an instant musing, but then looked up again and smiled sadly. "It seems that it's always you coming to my rescue…"

Doyle shrugged seeming embarrassed.

"I came for both of you… And I've seen…" She swallowed. "**I** did access the data in the _Maru_'s medical. I saw what they did to you both… the… the state you were in and what that did to Harper and to…" Again she hesitated, but then continued boldly after seeing the other's earnest gaze: "…and before that to Dylan."

"Dylan? He was…? I mean: was he able to…" Beka's voice trailed off.

"He wasn't exactly peachy, but he pulled himself together, enough anyway to fly us out of Illion and into slipstream," Doyle explained patiently. "Then he took off with a fighter to divert their attention from us."

"You probably tried to stop him, hm?" Beka asked, carefully avoiding anything in her tone that might have hinted a reproach. It didn't help much.

"Of course I tried, but I failed," the Seefrane retorted harshly. "He was adamant: _he _could fly in slipstream, _I _was to stay with you and get you through…"

"I was that bad?"

"We didn't know if you'd make it. And Dylan was going stir crazy sitting by, watching us struggling to save your life…"

Remembering her own feelings on the _Maru _while Draeger and Musseveni had been trying to save Dylan's life, Beka couldn't help shrugging.

"We both always sucked at that…" she admitted.

"Yes," Doyle agreed, "I remember how you flew into a solar storm to collect plasma and Dylan ran off to get himself beaten up by Thux' goons rather than stay with Trance when she got sick…"

Both women smiled at each other briefly. And then Beka stood up and came around her table, outstretching her hand. A bit puzzled, Doyle got to her feet and reached out for her fingers, obviously unsure what to make of it.

"Thank you, Doyle," she then heard Beka say to her amazement, "thank you for all the help you provided in the past; and just in case I don't get a chance to say it again later, thank you also for whatever more you will probably do in future to help me."

With an uncertain look on her face Doyle awkwardly squeezed the offered hand, trying to not apply more pressure to it than it was exerting itself. The human smiled:

"An old Earth-custom…" she explained.

Upon hearing that the uncertainty began to fade from the android's face. Releasing the small, deceptively fragile appearing hand, Beka took a step back, leaning against the table.

"I'm gonna be glad having you around, Doyle." .

The other blonde nodded.

"It's starting to get rather crowded onboard," she meant with a slightly ironic undertone. "I guess I'll have to inform Rommie that I need proper quarters if I'm to stick around…"

"She'll be around in a minute," Beka informed her.

"Really? That's good, it gives me a bit more time to…" Doyle hesitated, then began to fumble around at her waist belt, two rather unusual actions for an android. Beka watched her a bit intrigued. "Umm, listen Beka," she then heard, "there is something more… I need to… Well, you know…" She finally retrieved something from her girdle, a flat, white, somewhat crumpled envelope of some sorts and held it out in her hand. "For you…" she finally said.

Rebekkah stared at the extended hand with the small, dirty piece of paper on which she could see a word scribbled on: _Beka_. Instead of reaching out, she seemed to rather shy away from it, but the desk behind her stopped her from backing off. Seeing her reaction, Doyle sighed and stepped nearer, simply placing the envelope on the table next to her captain.

"It's…" Doyle tried to explain, stopped, began anew, "it's from Dylan, Beka…"

"I know," Beka whispered, still staring at the paper next to her, still unmoving. Doyle waited in silence for any further reaction, but none came. After a few instants she shrugged helplessly.

"I'm very sorry, Beka. I wish it had been me going off… I miss him, too," she said turning around to leave. With a visible effort Beka tore her eyes away from the table.

"I know, Doyle. I always knew that you… well, liked him better than anyone of us - Harper excepted, of course" she offered in a meek attempt at normalcy. The android looked back at the woman who now stood, arms crossed on her chest as if she were trying to hug herself, forlorn in the middle of the small room.

"It's not that I liked him better than you, but he was the first to make me feel like something more than just Harper's 'wet dreams'-doll once I found out about… about me; and for a rather long time he was the only one," she finished in a strange tone. Beka smiled sadly and understanding.

"We were… quite the jerks to you, hm?"

Doyle nodded in agreement.

"Quite, yes. And you were even turning Harper into a jerk, too…"

The other woman watched her sympathetically.

"And Dylan wasn't?"

The android shook her head in doubt, a grin lurking at the corners of her lips.

"Oh, he too was a jerk all right…" she then answered. "But at least he didn't seem to enjoy it."

Beka smiled hearing that, then drew back one step toward the desk, her eyes not leaving the Seefrane's face, while her right hand lightly covered the piece of paper still lying there.

Upon seeing Beka's hand on the paper, Doyle nodded in response.

"I'll go catch up with Rommie before she gets down here and then I'll… well, you know, do things…"

No longer paying attention to her, her eyes looking down at her own hand resting on the envelope, Beka nodded absentmindedly.

"Yes," she said distractedly, "yes, you better do that…" But then her voice called the other woman back: "Doyle, just one more thing..."

The android turned on the threshold and watched her captain expectantly, who finally tore her gaze away from the paper still hidden under her hand. And then Doyle gasped, almost bumping backwards into the doorframe as she noticed the raw pain in the human's eyes, for the first time no longer hidden behind harshness, coldness or irony.

"Is there a chance... **any **chance at all that..." Beka asked, her voice dying off as she saw sorrow and regret covering Doyle's face like a veil slowly falling down. The Seefrane shook her head almost in slow motion.

"Beka..." she sighed, "you saw it yourself..."

"They could have faked it," the woman pleaded with her.

"Beka, they **did **shoot him down, you saw him going down, the fire... They didn't just make this up. We had this verified through Argosy. Besides, faking things like that, of this magnitude... It always come out; people talk, someone sooner or later can't hold his tongue, rumours transpire, but there's been nothing. Nothing. And really, we haven't left a single stone unturned, trying to confirm or infirm the news that the Dragans finally got Dylan. And... it really **is **solid, Beka."

"Still..." the next almost begging objection came in a tone that Doyle never would have thought to hear from the one she had come to know as one of the cockiest, most reckless presences she had ever met, "maybe they do have him, but maybe he isn't..."

"Beka, please, even if he had survived the crash, there were 4- and 5-degree burns covering more than 30 percent of his body. Even under the best of circumstances, this is enough to bring anyone down. And Dylan was... When he flew away from us, he was already just hanging in there by the skin of his teeth. Beka, I wish I could tell you something else, but..." Doyle bit her lip, her face almost dissolving itself in a mask of grief. Seeing it, _Andromeda_'s new captain briefly squeezed her eyes, pained.

"I understand, I'm sorry, Doyle, I didn't want to put you through..."

"No, it's all right, I understand, too. I... I am just sorry that..." She sighed again and took a deep breath: "You see, Beka, android or not, Harper made sure that I feel just like you, that in times like this I desperately want to believe something different. But I am what I am. And no matter how much I want to hang on to some hope or other, how much I would like things to not be this way: they are what they are. And I simply can't go on hoping in vain, where I just know better. This was one thing I never could learn from Dylan."


	52. Chapter 51

A/N: Thanks a lot for the feedback. It is highly appreciated.

And _Natta_: many, many thanks.

**Chapter 51**

She had tried to argue with Rommie, to issue orders, to squirm her way out of it, but _Andromeda_'s avatar had been immovable in her conviction that her new captain was already going over the top while performing her duties. Brushing aside each and every one of Beka's arguments, she had sternly insisted that it was time for her to finally take a break, pointing out that according to the _Maru_'s and her own log she had been on her feet for nearly 48 hours, that most of that time she had been busy digesting one blow after another; ultimately _Andromeda _cut the matter short by threatening to remove Beka from duty by force if she didn't leave for a break.

And now here she was, in front of the old, familiar hangar-deck of the _Eureka Maru_, staring at the doors with dry eyes burning from fatigue and dread.

"Beka?"

"Yes, Rommie?"

Still eyeing the entrance suspiciously as if some monster was about to emerge from the hangar-deck at any given moment, Beka barely tilted her head in the direction of the hologram.

"Beka, what's the matter? You've been standing here for the past three minutes and 24 seconds…"

"Nothing's the matter, Rommie," the young woman replied sharply. "I'm just thinking…"

"Well, can't you think on the _Maru_, lying in your bed?"

Beka cleared her throat.

"Yeah," she acquiesced hoarsely, "I suppose I could do that." But she still didn't move. _Andromeda_'s hologram crossed her arms over her chest, looking something in-between inquiring and cross.

"So then why don't you?" she finally asked, her tone this time a bit sharper.

Rebekkah Valentine sighed, lifted her arm to insert the codes needed to open the doors, but then her hand dropped back alongside her body, she turned around and briskly walked away at high speed.

It was a good thing that the hologram of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ was not programmed to stare open-mouthed. Because if she had been, she would have done so right there – which would have looked stupid. And that was so not a good look for a warship.

After a long, aimless walk through the at that hour almost deserted corridors of the huge vessel, Beka Valentine came to a halt in front of her old quarters onboard. It was only then that her ship's hologram reappeared in front of her.

"Beka, what are you doing here?"

"I've decided, Rommie, to stay here tonight…"

"Here where?" the ship inquired. "Here as in your former quarters? Well, you can't, I've given them to Doyle…"

"What?" Beka exclaimed outraged. "Why did you do that? What's she needing quarters for anyway? She's an avatar. Get her out of…"

"Beka!"

"Well, where am I supposed to…"

"Beka!" _Andromeda _admonished her harshly. "There ARE quarters here onboard for you…"

The woman frowned, her eyes ablaze with stubbornness and hurt and a glowing rage reaching far beyond the matter they were quarrelling about. Seeing it, the hologram almost wished she could sigh.

"I don't want some random quarters, I want the quarters that have always been rightfully mine…" Beka began again, ranting on.

"They've never been 'rightfully' yours, Beka," the ship cut in a more moderate tone, designed to calm her down, "they 'rightfully' belong to my first officer, who has preferred however to keep his old ones. You are now my captain: and I DID prepare quarters for you – not random ones, but exactly those that are **now **'rightfully' **yours**," she finished, stressing the last word as she was driving her point home. "But I suppose that those antics about not wanting to retreat, not going to the _Maru _and so on are exactly about that, am I right?"

The human fixed her from wide eyes, with her mouth slightly open as if she wanted to cut in, but then she abruptly stalked off, marching right through the hologram towards the indicated rooms that she knew to be located only a few meters further down the corridor. But then she stopped again, staring motionlessly at the closed doors.

_Andromeda_'s hologram reappeared next to her, a compassionate frown turning the pretty face into the very image of concern.

"Beka," the ship tried in a quiet, warmly vibrating voice, "why don't you take it slower? You don't have to do it all in once. Maybe the _Maru _is indeed the better idea for now…"

Her captain shook her head, her expression less stubborn rather than hunted.

"I… I can't, Rommie… You don't understand. I can't go there, not now. The last time I was with him alone and unobserved by others, it was in my cabin there…"

"I see," _Andromeda _replied thoughtfully. "Listen, with the triumvirs and their escorts onboard and fully manned I don't have any spare quarters left, but I could…"

"No," Beka fended her off, "don't bother, it's all right. Sooner or later I will have to do it and…" She fell quiet, not finishing her sentence.

The hologram exchanged a worried look with her own image that had appeared on a monitor inserted in the bulkhead behind the woman's back.

"I think I'll have Rommie come…"

"No," Beka interrupted her again, "no, really – it's not necessary, I just have to muster enough courage to…" She swallowed convulsively. "…to just get in there…" she then finished.

"Maybe it's not that bad," _Andromeda _attempted to console her. "It's not as if it were still the way you knew it, you know."

She was a ship. It was one of her tasks to always monitor all of her inhabitants' physical condition, most of all her captain's. It didn't remain a secret to her that at that statement Beka's heart rate spiked, although on the outside the young woman seemed to almost turn to stone, her features dropping into a rigid mask void of all expression.

"Beka?" she asked tentatively, but got no response. "Beka?" she tried anew. It took some more, seemingly interminable seconds until she finally saw a first blink, then heard her clear her throat.

"What – what do you mean?"

"I had his things packed and stored…"

She didn't get to the end of her phrase before Beka kicked into action, frantically rushing through her once more and towards the doors that slid open, revealing the huge suite behind them darkened, cool and empty. The furniture hadn't changed, but everything else that had been not standard ship furnishing had been removed. Storming through the living room, Beka almost ran into the adjacent bedroom, not waiting for the lights to flare up before turning around her own axis, a lost look in her eyes. Dylan had always kept the first room, often frequented by others, a bit neutral, displaying personal items only sparsely in there, using its inconspicuousness more as a last line of defence than as a real place to retreat. It always had been his second room, the one only few were allowed to enter, that he had used as his hideout from the world, that showed all of those items that everyone normally got to gather around oneself over the years: books, lamps, paintings, photos, superfluous things that documented a lived life. It had taken Beka, Trance and Harper more than three years to get through to that room, into the only place onboard where Dylan had permitted himself to be just Dylan, where he had left his mark as a person, not as captain…

Although she had been warned, it hit Beka like a fist burying itself into her stomach to see all familiar things gone from there, the huge space clean and almost septic and only sparsely furnished with a bed and some night cases. Even his bookcase was gone. Almost panting, she hurried to the walk-in cupboards, snatching the doors open only to find them too empty, the shelves grey and waiting for someone else to fill them. Nothing of him was left in there either, not even his scent.

For a brief moment Beka had to lean on the frame, fearing that her legs were just about to give in under her, for the first time in her life inwardly cursing _Andromeda_'s all too efficient air filtering systems. But then she straightened up and stalked her way to the bed, sitting down gingerly as if afraid she might otherwise fall down.

Rhade had been right, she had known all along, hidden deep under as many layers of denial and anger as she could muster she had always known. Over the past, interminable hours she had even begun to accept it. Or so she had thought. But confronted now with the merciless emptiness of the suite from which everything that she had known, liked, detested, made fun of, wondered about had been removed as if it had never existed, she felt how an enormous, impossible to fill void was breaking up inside her very core, consuming, engulfing her like a tide.

"Why?" she heard herself scream, hardly recognizing her own voice in the harsh, savage, coarse cry of anguish. "Why did you do that?"

_Andromeda_'s hologram, that had materialized in front of her, frowned, not understanding.

"Because either way, whether you accepted the commission offered or not, I had to get everything ready for my new captain. Beka, be sensible…" she tried in a pleading tone.

Leaning with arms outstretched and rigid on the bed under her, Beka glared at her darkly.

"What did you do with it?" she asked in a low, strangled voice.

"I didn't **do **anything with it," the ship answered her, beginning to look slightly upset. "I stored it. He… he named you next of kin. It's yours to dispose of it, but as you weren't…"

"Get it back," Beka interrupted her curtly.

"What? All of it?"

"All of it. And **put **it back exactly as it was."

"But Beka…"

"Do it, Rommie," she ordered sternly, but not raising her voice. The hologram contemplated her for an instant, then nodded.

"Aye, Captain," she said briskly. "I'll have it done first thing in the…"

"Right now, Rommie," Beka added, not waiting for her to finish.

At first it seemed as if the hologram wanted to protest anew, but then she reconsidered.

"Aye," she confirmed, disappearing.

Merely ten minutes later a small army of Maria-bots led by Rommie entered the premises, each of them carrying metal cases they placed in the middle of the living room. Through the opened bedroom doors, Beka – still seated on the bed – observed in silence as they began to unpack everything with mechanical, precise movements.

Standing in the doorframe, Rommie threw her a concerned look.

"Beka," she begun, but again didn't get far.

"Get me the boxes with his clothes in here," the captain cut her off.

Pressing her lips together as if wanting to suppress something she knew better to remain unsaid, _Andromeda_'s avatar turned around with a sigh and grabbed one of the smaller cases, followed by five Maria-bots carrying in the rest.

"That's all?" Beka asked.

A thin, barely noticeable smile played on Rommie's lips as she remembered the sheer incredible number of cases Beka had carried onboard the _Andromeda _when she joined, not without informing her that she preferred keeping the largest part of 'her stuff' onboard the _Maru_. The smile quickly vanished though after throwing another look at her captain, who was now sitting slightly slumped over, with sagging shoulders on the bed so large she seemed completely lost in.

"Yes, that's all," Rommie confirmed.

"Thank you."

Pushing herself up with difficulty like an old, frail woman, Beka worked her way towards the cases, dropping to her knees in front of them. Wanting to help, Rommie motioned to come nearer, but with a brief shaking of her head the human indicated that she wanted the avatar to stay where she was.

"Rommie, would you mind giving me some privacy?"

"No, I wouldn't mind, of course I wouldn't mind, but Beka…" She hesitated. This was Beka, her friend, the one she had grown so close to over the years as if she were just some other facet of her own persona, but by now she also was her newly appointed captain. And so Rommie stopped, and thought for a fraction of a second, but then continued boldly: "Beka, what you're doing here isn't healthy! You… You have to stop this."

The woman looked up to her – and as it had happened previously with Doyle, the undiluted pain reflecting from her eyes made Rommie almost shrink back.

"I... I have to stop? I haven't even started," she heard her mutter hoarsely, "I know I'll have to stop eventually, but... Right now I don't even know where to begin... I... I just don't know how…" One after one she opened all boxes, time and again briefly stroking over some neatly folded sweater, shirt or jacket. "You see, I lost him, Rommie, and I'm still losing him…"

"I know, Beka, we all have…"

"No, you don't understand it. I…" A sob caught in her throat preventing her from continuing. She bit her lip, then went on: "I'm losing him **right ****now**. I try and try to remember him and I can't. I can't, Rommie!" she cried loudly before pressing a hand against her mouth. "For months I did nothing but block everything out that could have been even remotely related to you, to Dylan, and now I... I can't remember him anymore!" Searching for Rommie's gaze, she saw the avatar looking at her with something like envy, with coldness and maybe also some anger in her eyes.

"You should count your blessings! You don't know how lucky you are!" the dark, enraged beauty hissed out between her teeth. A puzzled expression stole itself into Beka's features.

"Lucky?"

"Yes, lucky, Beka!" Rommie stressed anew. "You see, I DO remember Dylan, down to his last wrinkle, I remember every pore on his skin, the way every single hair fell, the sound of his voice, its exact sonority in any given circumstance, the way his steps resounded through my corridors, the way his steps _felt _when he was walking, the precise amount of pressure he exerted when he touched me and the warmth his body exuded when he was near me, his scent, his way of thinking, the exact nuance of blue in his eyes. I remember it so well I could reproduce him perfectly. To me he's just as real as if he were alive. Only he's not here. Never again present. You can't remember him? I wish I had that luxury!"

Eyes brimming with unshed tears of sympathy, Beka nodded to her, but then smiled in a forlorn, lost, empty manner.

"I'm sorry, Rommie, I don't mean to diminish the hurt you feel, it's just that…" She searched for words, but then gave up, exclaiming: "Gods, I envy you!"

"And I envy you," _Andromeda _replied. "I'll never understand humans truly…" she then concluded. With a last look at the opened cases, she seemed to clam back up to android-mode: "Don't go through with this, Beka," she tried one last time though.

"I can't, Rommie, I just can't. I need to do this!" her captain exclaimed, burying her hands in the case in front of her and beginning to remove the clothing. "Please, could you just leave now?"

_Andromeda_'s hologram contemplated the sight on the bed in front of her with lines of sorrow furrowing the normally smooth surface of her face. She had left as ordered, but Beka had forgotten to engage privacy mode – and Rommie had refrained from reminding her. And so she had come back to check on her friend.

"Oh, Beka…" she sighed, deeply concerned.

Curled up on herself in a fetal position, Rebekkah Valentine had finally fallen asleep, her features softened somewhat, her face tainted by traces of tears and, although relaxed in sleep, not losing the deep lines of grief and pain running down along the sides of her mouth. Her arms were tightly clutched around a huge, brown leather jacket that she seemed to hold on to as if her life depended on it.

_Andromeda _had observed her when she had found what had become one of Dylan's favorite pieces of clothing. From the very start when she came across the jacket, Beka had clung to it with a fierceness as huge as had been the sobs that began suddenly to wreck through her body. With the stupid thing in her arms she had made her way back to the bed, lying down and burying her face into it. Rommie suspected at least some of the leather to be ruined by now in the places where Beka had been crying into it. But then, what did it matter?

The ship's gaze fell anew on her captain's face, that was resting on some portion of the huge jacket. Rommie had had everything cleaned before storing Dylan's possessions away, so she knew that it smelled of nothing but a faint hint of leather.

_Maybe it is enough though_, _Andromeda _thought sadly, _to help you find a splinter of what you had made him out to be for you. I wish we could switch places – for your sanity... and mine._


	53. Chapter 52

OKay, folks! Sorry for the long delay. And beware: the following is not beta-ed, since that would have meant some more waiting, so I decided that for once you will have to put up with my mistakes. Sorry for that, too.

**Chapter 52**

"Beka, wait!"

She halted her steps and turned around, surprised to see Rafe hurrying after her. In the three weeks since her return, they hadn't seen much of each other. She had kept busy with catching up on everything she had been missing, digging her teeth into the info on the Dragans, plowing through reports and files, supervising and checking the progress on the mobilization of the fleet, on _Andromeda_'s preparations for battle, on Harper's assignments, rushing through meetings, drills and councils at a maddening pace. At times she slowed down somewhat when Rommie came to her, pointing out that there was nothing to be gained from having everyone exhausted on the eve of the attack. But then she slowly began to set again an even tighter schedule – if not for others, at least for herself. In those weeks Rafe had been… around, but there had been not much time she felt inclined to spare for him. As she now watched him approach her, it occurred to her that it was for the first time in four days that they were actually exchanging a word with each other.

"Hey!" she greeted him, hoping to sound friendly. His face left no doubt about it that she hadn't quite succeeded.

"Listen, I know you're busy, but I was wondering if I could have a word with you…" Rafe began awkwardly.

Beka nodded.

"Sure, why don't you just walk with me?" she suggested.

"Where are you headed?"

"Harper's," she told him curtly.

"Oh?!" Rafe sounded mildly curious. "You need to have a heart-to-heart with him?" And now he sounded – more than mildly – jealous. Beka smiled in a decidedly not pleasant manner.

"In a way…" she admitted. "I actually need to kick his ass," she then elaborated further. "He's late on… everything really."

Her brother bit his lower lip.

"Yeah, I know…" he said. It was Beka's turn to look at him with curiosity.

"You know? How?"

"He told me… Listen, Rocket, I… It's probably not my place to say it, but I think that all this thing with the Rosies, the fusion catalyst and the converter doesn't sit well with him."

"You're right," Beka said sharply. "It's not your place. As for Harper: it was an explicit order. He doesn't have to be comfortable with it, he just has to obey immediately and to the best of his capabilities."

"But… Beka, he told me that all of them have always been prototypes of… long-shots, really; and that just one of those can literally kill millions."

"Precisely. And go figure, that's what they're supposed to do:" his sister retorted coldly, "kill the millions the Commonwealth needs dead."

It stopped Rafe in his tracks. He satred after her while she kept going for a few more steps before realizing that he was no longer by her side.

"You coming?" she asked him, turning around for him. He didn't answer, just continued to stare at her with furrowed brows. "Rafe?"

"Beka," he tried pleadingly. "Ever since that broadcast you did not once stop to think…"

"Think of what?" the captain interrupted him harshly.

"Of maybe another way to solve things," Raphael Valentine insisted. "Going for an overkill… Beka, two wrongs won't make one right."

"That's why I'm going for three," she replied sarcastically. Rafe bit his lips.

"It's…" He hesitated. "It is Dad all over, isn't it?" he then asked.

She took a step back, her eyes narrowing.

"What is?" she asked, sounding a lot colder and more distant than before.

Her brother looked around him, gesturing vaguely and a bit helpless about. "This…" he said, his eyes returning to her face. "The hurt, the anger… Dylan. This… rage consuming you, everything… every**one **around you."

She glared at him sternly, but he did not avert his eyes.

"Half the females in the Known Worlds could tell you that there was not much of a father figure lost on Dylan Hunt," she tried to fence him off with lame joke. He didn't reply. And then she blinked, her face suddenly losing colour, expression, harshness… Her shoulders lost their squareness.

"No," Beka answered in a whisper. "It's… nothing like Dad."

"No?"

She shook her head, resigned.

"Even before you left…" She seemed to search for the right words. "Dad was always either drunk, on flash or on some gig trying to get the money for the booze and flash. I was desperate that I couldn't save him from himself. But when he passed away… It hurt, but… It sounds strange, but I didn't **miss** him. You know like in… 'missing'! **Him**! He had not really been there for such a long time already."

Beka drew a deep breath, trying to compose herself before continuing. Rafe kept silent, not daring to make so much as a sound, fearing she might stop again if he had.

"Dylan though… **He** **was** **there**, Rafe! I could **count** on him being always there like… a rock or like a law of physics. No matter what happened, no matter how bad things got around us or between us… I could always stretch my hand behind me knowing that he'd be there to take it. And now…" Beka sighed, defeated. "I'm sitting in his office, reading through reports and I lift my eyes to ask him something just to find myself alone. I'm in Command and something comes up, and my hand reaches out to the com-link on its own before I remember that there's no-one left to call…"

"That's not true, though. Beka, there are people you could call, and who'd come to help you…"

"No, not like Dylan," she said in a definitive tone. "You see, I know that they... that you all like me," she hastily corrected herself. "That you love me, trust me, will go out of your way for me. But... the others, Rafe, they are my crew. Even when Dylan was still around, I was their superior and… They depend on me and that makes them all, even Rommie, in a small, infinitesimal way a bit… afraid of me. Maybe just a little, but afraid. It used once to be different with Rhade, but ever since it turned out that I'm…" She snorted, her fingers indicating quotation marks in the air: "…ever since it turned out that I'm the 'Matriarch'… Dylan though…" Beka closed her eyes briefly, in an expression tired beyond limits. When she re-opened them, she looked straight at Rafe.

"He never was afraid of me, you know. And there's nothing, really nothing that I wouldn't do to just hear his voice once more yelling at me because I screwed up, pointing out my mistakes, telling me that I'm dead wrong, that I need to get a grip."

Her brother looked at her, sorrow in his eyes. She was right, he had seen it as well. And over the past weeks he'd too come to feel some of the awe for her, that she suspected in others. It was just a tiny, almost imperceptible hunch more than a real feeling, but it placed something like a veil between her and all others, thin and yet impossible to rip apart. He shrugged helplessly, smiling a lopsided grin, deciding to try nonetheless:

"If you think you could use someone to tell you when you're dead-wrong…" Rafe offered.

Beka smiled sadly at him.

"Liar, you're afraid, too. Although you're Valentine Smarter… And that's not helpful, either," she added even sadder. Her brother frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm you're little sister. Whatever I do is always good enough for you. And they…" her head jerked to the side, indicating all other people in her life, "like I said: they're my friends **and** my crew. As long as I keep them alive and in one piece, everything goes."

"But it didn't 'go' with Dylan."

"No," Beka confirmed. "He always demanded the best I had to offer – and he wanted it all. And when I gave it to him, he shook his head and smiled and asked for even more."

"And you liked that?" Rafe asked incredulously. Beka sighed:

"I thought I didn't, but I realize now that… I actually loved it. Rafe, do you know what's worse than having someone expect too much of you?"

Raphael Valentine's eyes widened in understanding.

"When no-one ever expects anything of you," he answered in a strangled voice. The story of his life. His sister watched him with melancholy. There was a brief silence.

"So he always wanted your best?" Rafe finally ended it.

"No, not just my best. He wanted miracles from me," Beka stated matter-of-factly.

"And did he get them?"

"Yes," Beka answered simply. "He wanted me to perform miracles, he trusted me to do it – and he got them."

"Well, then… you can do it again, no?"

"It's not that easy," his sister disagreed. "Come on," she suddenly told him, "I'll show you something!"

Turning on her heels she headed down the corridors in a hurry. Puzzled by her abrupt manner Rafe rushed after her.

"Beka, hey! Where are you going?" She didn't give him an answer. And when she finally came to a halt more than five minutes later and several decks away at a corridor turn leading to one of _Andromeda_'s hangars, Rafe didn't feel much closer to one than before. The fact that she just stood there, leaning one of her hands flatly against the bulkhead didn't help either.

"What did you want to show me here?" the man asked at last. Beka swallowed.

"It's here where it happened for the very first time…"

Rafe looked around with slight bewilderment. The first time? What could she mean? For that matter: what in the name of the Vedran Empress could possibly have happened here, of all places? Was it here that they had seen each other for the first time? Had Dylan rescued his sister from someone trying to board them, Nietzscheans, Magog or whatever else used to come screaming at them? Had she rescued him? Had they fought…? Kissed? Surely they couldn't have… Nah!

"You and Dylan…" Rafe swallowed dryly, not knowing exactly how to go on – or if he wanted to know at all. "I mean…" He stopped again. "Were you…? Better yet, have you…? I mean, here? In the corridor?"

She looked up at him, surprised.

"What?" And then, seeing his expression, the pain that had seemed almost sculpted into her features receded, and she chuckled.

"God, no! Get you're mind out of the gutter, Raphael Valentine. It was here for the first time that I came to greet him after one of his away-missions. I had never done it before, but that time was special: for the first time he had left me in command of the _Andromeda_ with an actual assignment – and a really huge one – to take care of while he was gone. I did… well, I did great in fact, and I couldn't wait to tell him. But his own mission had gone… well, not badly, but not really well, either. He had trouble to come to terms with it and…" She briefly laughed up. "He wanted to talk about it. To me! He not only had trusted me with his ship and his mission, now he was also trusting me with his mistakes. And then…"

Her voice broke. And she didn't so much as attempt to continue. After a while Rafe coughed lightly, clearing his throat. His sister remained lost in thought, gently stroking the bulkhead.

"Beka…?" he urged her softly.

"Hmm…?" Lifting her head to look at him, he could see that she actually had forgotten all about his presence. "Oh yes…" she then said vaguely. She too cleared her throat.

"Anyway," she continued suddenly, as if there had been no interruption, "as I said, we were walking down the corridor, and when we came here Dylan stopped and looked at me and… He was… suddenly beaming, Rafe, all worries seemed to just drop off of him, and he was literally glowing with joy as he told me how proud he was of me."

The tall, dark man kept silent, his thoughts drifting back in time while he was listening to her, understanding what she was trying to tell him better and better, wishing more and more to be able to escape this understanding.

"From then on there was precious little that I wouldn't have done just to look into his eyes and see him look back at me that way. And I'd give anything for just one more chance to see that look again," Beka softly admitted.

"What was it you did?" Rafe wanted to know. His sister furrowed her brows.

"What do you mean?"

"The first time…" he said. "What did you do that first time that he was so proud of you?"

"I… There was a Than-colony we helped survive. There were… I don't know… millions in danger. And we evacuated them and brought them supplies and…"

"And you really think destroying a whole solar system and the Divine knows what else will measure up to that?"

"What?"

"Beka," Rafe insisted, "that guy you just evoked so eloquently, who wasn't afraid of you and pushed you to your limits, wanted you to do miracles for him and was so proud of you when he got them from you… I have some trouble picturing this fellow looking down on you with pride for slaughtering millions…"

"Go figure!" Beka hissed. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when Raphael Valentine goes soft on moral scruples!"

"This is about you, not me. I've never claimed to be anywhere near Mr. Nice, but Dylan was apparently. And if we were to follow your line of thought and Harper's…"

"Oh, just cut it out, Rafe, will ya'? You have no idea what you're talking about. And only because I just fell for your 'worried big brother'-routine and told you something about Dylan and me, that doesn't mean that you understand anything about us." The softness in her voice and face was gone, vanished completely, in its place leaving only the by now familiar, cold and steely tone.

"I wasn't implying…"Seeing the rejecting expression in her eyes, he stopped again, then sighed. This wasn't working. He decided to try a different approach. "Beka, do you remember Danny?"

She snorted derisively.

"Danny, the hippie chick who never existed, and whom you lied to me about?"

"It wasn't all a lie. There really was a Danny, whom I really loved. And whom I really lost…"

"Indeed?" The explanation did nothing to appease Beka. "And what exactly, Rafe, did you lose with Danny? Another one of your con partners? One more chance at a rewarding one-night stand? Go on, tell me, what was it?"

"Beka…"

"Dammit, Rafe! Didn't you listen to so much as a word of what I tried to tell you? This man was my life, for more than six years **he**-**was-my-life**! I flew **his** ship, commanded **his** crew, helped build **his** dream, defended **him**, fought **for** him, fought **with** him… Hell, I even picked the Commonwealth uniform-designs for the _Andromeda_-crew based on what would suit **him** best."

"Yes, I heard you, loud and clear and in full length," her brother retorted, beginning to sound just as angry as her. "I **did** listen to you, but so far you don't seem inclined to return the favor. I am not trying to make you turn away from what you seem to think to be owing Dylan. I'm just trying to reconcile that with what I know he thought to owe you…"

"What?" The woman's anger seemed to dissipate on the spot, making room for bewilderment. "What… are you trying to tell me?"

Rafe sighed.

"Beka, I… I talked to Dylan on Myrmidon and… He felt guilty, torn about having made you once feel expendable and… He was frantic, desperate to get you back, to prove to you that he cared. And yet he came alone, risking only his own life to get you out. Whatever feelings concerning you he needed to sort out: he did it on his own, trying hard to keep all damage to the others, your crew AND the Dragans, to a minimum. Doyle told us that he even refused to open a slip-portal close to Illion, although it could have saved you all a lot of trouble – and in the long run might even have saved his life…"

His voice trailed off, since the look on Beka's face clearly showed that she no longer listened.

"He felt guilty?" she finally picked up the thread. "Hell, I had so hoped that we had managed to solve at least that part between the two of us…"

Rafe bit his lip, realizing that he should have left that bit of information out.

"Beka, I'm sure he knew…"

"No," she disagreed, "no. If he felt guilty then he obviously didn't know. You see, when I ended up on Seefra, I was so angry with everything. And when he finally found me, I blamed it all on him: not just his mistakes, but mine too, and those of everyone else, the things he'd done as well as everything I couldn't or wouldn't do when he asked me to. I knew that I was hurting him, but I just couldn't stop. It took a rather long while until we found a way to make up again. But I thought that ever since I had managed to convince him that I had been wrong, but… if what you say is true, if he really felt that he needed to prove to me that I was not expendable for him… It means that in the end I did not succeed, that I let Dylan walk to his death thinking that he'd failed me."

"And now you think that you deserve to punish yourself about this by living with the knowledge that you failed him, too?"

"What?"

"Beka, wiping out all Dragans from existence… This is something the Dylan you told me about would only have condoned when all other options would have been exhausted. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, but for your and his sake: at least make sure that it is the only way."

He saw his words sink in. For the very first time since their conversation had started, Beka seemed to really focus on their meaning, on what he was actually trying to tell her, instead of just putting some sounds in relation to what **she** thought and felt. For a moment Rafe just looked at her in silence, then turned around and slowly walked away, not sure if she would even notice.

She did though. Although she seemed absorbed with her own musings, a part of her noticed. _How very much like Rafe_, Beka thought. He'd always known exactly when to close an argument, not losing one word more than necessary to drive home his point. _This is something the Dylan you told me about would only have condoned when all other options would have been exhausted._ His words kept reverberating through her mind. _And sometimes not even then_, she silently admitted to herself. She thought back, really hard: about Arkology, the Worldship, about Samsara, Witchhead and Enga's Redoubt. _No, not even then_. And then it hit her, the one, the obvious answer she had been looking for ever since her last encounter with Trance with a clarity that almost took her breath. How could she have been so blind, and for such a long time? If only she had known sooner what she had just found out! She needed confirmation, though. And Rafe had been right: she first had to make sure that all other options had indeed been exhausted before going further down the path she had chosen.

"_Andromeda_!" she finally said aloud.

"Yes, Captain."

"Are any of the triumvirs still onboard?"

"No, they left, all of them!"

"Very well. In that case, I want everyone else too off ship. Right now!"

"Captain?" The hologram materialized right in front of her, frowning.

"Anything unclear?" Beka asked sharply.

"No," the image replied, frowning some more, but complying. The corridors began to fill with deafening siren-noise, cut by the ship's crisply repeated order:

"All hands abandon ship!"

"What am I supposed to record in my log-files?" _Andromeda_ inquired politely.

"You may note that before we enter any combat actions, it is vital to try and obtain the last missing answers."

"What answers? Where from?"

"Well," Beka drawled, "there always was but one of us seeming to have all answers, right? I'm on my way to Command. I want you to plot a course. We'll be on our way as soon as I get there."

"On our way to where?" the ship demanded once more to know, beginning to sound as exasperated as possible for a warship.

Beka smiled a thin, cold smile miles away from her usual grin.

"Like I said: before I decide for one course of action or other, I need some more answers, Rommie. And this time I will get them, no matter what. Plot the fastest way to Tarn-Vedra, please."


	54. Chapter 53

A/N: Okay, first things first: Things are back to normal, Squid109 is beta-ing - and so I'm back on terra firma. Thanks so much, Squid109!

And: thank you, everyone, for the feedback!

**Chapter 53**

Command was eerily still. In fact, the whole ship displayed – but for the discreet humming of its engines – a creepy silence that would have made the skin of _Andromeda_'s avatar crawl with goose-bumps, let bad memories of a dreaded past resurfacing. Had _Andromeda_'s avatar been aboard, that is. But Rommie had been left behind on Terrazed, together with the rest of the crew.

Hidden within the asteroid field on the rim of Tarn Vedra's system was the _Andromeda Ascendant_, deserted except for its commanding officer, Captain Rebekkah B. Valentine. And although its android body was not present and neither the ship's core personality nor its hologram could suffer from goose-bumps, the uncomfortable uneasiness that _Andromeda _knew to translate into fear with organics was there, a reminder of a time when she had emerged from slipstream with her entire crew massacred. Reminder of an even scarier time, when she had been pulled out from the event horizon of a black hole, looking into the despairing eyes of a captain confronted with the reality of having been left more alone than any human being had ever been left before. Reminder too of yet another time, one even more grim, when she had found herself completely deserted, no crew, not even a dead one, no captain, no friends, no functions, not even memories… And in exactly the same spot where she was hiding now.

They had been there for three days now – and the fourth was just about to begin. They didn't do anything, didn't contact anyone on Tarn Vedra, didn't react to the messages that kept coming in from all over the Command Centers of the New Systems' Commonwealth. The triumvirs, the Senate, their senior crew members, friends, allies – from Terrazed, from Sinti, Castalia, Diphda 5, Tarn Vedra of course, Venceremos… only to be completely ignored by Beka, who had ordered them to stay incommunicado and wait; for the time being, however long that was. Which was exactly what they did.

"Beka!"

"Good morning, Rommie," _Andromeda_'s captain greeted her ship's holographic image in an even, almost conversational tone as she emerged from her quarters.

"Captain, I've intercepted three more messages for us from Terrazed, four from…"

"It doesn't matter, Rommie," Beka told her curtly.

The hologram pressed its lips together. Of course it didn't matter. The Captain wasn't likely to go through any of them anyway. She blinked out of existence after throwing a last, long pensive look after her commanding officer's frame headed towards Command. The monitors inserted in the bulkheads flashed to life, however, matching Rebekkah Valentine's progress through the corridors. _Andromeda _was determined to get herself some answers before the human had reached the bridge.

"Beka, how long do we plan to stay incommunicado?"

"For the time being," came the cryptic answer.

"While we are doing what exactly?" _Andromeda _demanded in an even more determined tone.

"Waiting." That response was even sharper.

"Waiting for what?" the ship asked in an exasperated tone. "What's there to wait for and… and for how long, Beka? After all, there is a war coming up, is there not?"

The blonde captain stopped her stride and turned around to face _Andromeda_'s features on the nearest monitor. For a brief moment she scrutinized the beauty displayed on the screen with narrowed eyes, then nodded.

"You know what, Rommie? You're absolutely right. It's time to stop the waiting. Arm missile tubes one to twenty."

With that the woman turned towards the nearest ladder leading to the next deck.

"Captain?" Andromeda's image briefly closed her eyes. Again the puzzled war-ship. How she hated the part!

"Anything unclear, Rommie?"

_A lot_, _Andromeda _thought, but refrained from speaking her mind. By the time she had resolved with herself to push further for answers, Beka had reached Command and was manning the pilot's station.

"Okay, Rommie, we're moving out of here. I'm gonna take you nice and steady a bit further into the system and then it's show-time!"

Now that she had more information, _Andromeda _was not really surprised to find out that she didn't feel any more reassured. Arming missile-tubes and moving out for show-time into the Vedran system didn't sound… quite right.

"Beka… Captain, may I ask about our intentions?"

A bright grin flashed up on the young woman's face.

"Only the best, Rommie, only the best. After all, the only thing we can control are our intentions, and if they are good… Well, you know the tune!"

The grin grew to a defiant grimace with a slightly menacing nuance. Discreetly, _Andromeda _checked her captain's condition, but everything seemed to be in perfect order. Beka didn't even seem tired, all her vitals in perfect balance, her demeanor calm, composed and precise. Not a sign of any physical or mental instability or even stress – as far as _Andromeda _could tell. Unless of course one might have wanted to see the fact that her captain was about to move to strike out at a target in the Vedran system as one.

"Beka, what is our target?"

She didn't receive an answer. Clear from the asteroid field, Beka accelerated and they were on their way through the tiny Vedran system, heading towards its sun. They came to a halt abruptly, albeit with Beka's usual consummate elegance, close-by the system's star, that was by now filling _Andromeda_'s central screens with its brightness.

_"Andromeda_, fire missiles 1 to 5, after that fire the next missiles five at a time in two-minutes intervals."

"Beka?"

The hologram appeared next to the weapons' station, looking positively aghast at her commanding officer, who had moved across to the console.

"Beka, what are we doing?"

"We're knocking at the door, Rommie. For months we've sent messages all over the galaxies, then we've waited around for days patiently. And now we're knocking. Loudly. Fire the damned missiles."

"Beka…"

"I said: fire!" The woman's hand came down heavily on the weapons' console, as she speedily executed her own order. Two seconds later the sun filling the monitors flared up in an explosion of moderate proportions.

The action ended _Andromeda_'s objections, and she began to fire away her missiles at the ordered intervals. As more and more missiles hit the sun, explosions increased, the impacts causing a small-scale chain reaction.

"Beka," _Andromeda _tried again, "how long do you plan to go on with this? The eruptions will have repercussions for the entire system…"

"Of course they will," her captain agreed readily, "but we will go on with it nonetheless for as long as it takes. And if this isn't enough, you will arm a nova."

"What? But that will destroy the entire system! Beka, this is Trance's sun, this is Tarn Vedra!!"

"But she already knows this, Rommie."

Beka swirled around towards the doors to Command. Framed by the massive structure there was a petite figure with masses of bronze curls falling down around a small, pretty face with enormous dark eyes. Seeing her, a malicious smile began to spread across Beka's features.

"Look who's decided to be coming to dinner, after all," she murmured. "Trance, how nice of you to drop by!" she then added aloud, bitterness barely hidden by her ironic tone.

"Like you left me a choice!" the delicate beauty accused her, slowly coming closer.

"Oh, but I did, Trance!" Beka mocked her sharply. "You could have **not **come, you could… have chosen to valiantly go under. So you see, in fact I DID leave you a choice. How could I not have left you one? I mean, after all it was you who told me that to succeed in life I need to learn everything about choices, about decisions, about whom to sacrifice for what… Don't tell me now that you're surprised about how much, how fast and how well I learned about how to force a decision, how to make a… gambit."

"Beka, what exactly do you hope to get out of all this?" the golden avatar demanded to know, eyes starting to burn with retained emotion.

"Not much. Just some answers…"

"What if I don't have the answers?"

"Why don't you first wait for the questions before you decide that you can't answer them?" Beka retorted sharply.

The young girl's dark, burning eyes bore fiercely into the older woman's ice-cold, aloof gaze. For seconds they just simply resumed to trying to stare the other one down, until finally Trance averted her face by violently turning on her heels.

"I really don't need this…" she muttered under her breath, storming out of Command with hasty, staggering steps. But her former friend's voice let her swirl around before she had reached the doors.

"Rommie, arm that nova!" Beka ordered in a steely tone.

"Oh, for goodness sakes', stop the antics!" Trance hissed at her. "Do you really want me to believe that you will go through with destroying an entire system? Dylan's home?"

"Wrong question," Beka told her sweetly. "The right one would be: are you willing to take the chance that I might?"

"You're bluffing!" the golden being exclaimed defiantly. "You can't mean it! And if you do, I will… I could go super-nova right here and now. That would kill you, too."

"Tell me, _dear one_," the woman retorted with a vicious grin, her voice drenched in sarcasm, "do I look like I care?"

Again the dark gaze drilled into the blue-grey one. Without averting her eyes, the grin deepening, Beka casually leaned back against her console, crossing her arms on her chest. It was the coldest sight Trance could have imagined. She drew in a sharp breath and almost had to fight an impulse to run away, managing only at the very last moment to prevent herself from taking a step back. Still, Beka saw the tiny withdrawal – and seemed to grow even more relaxed. Trance frowned, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.

"What happened to you, Beka?" she whispered with a sob, to which the woman responded with a frightening reaction: she shrugged indifferently.

"It's a rather long story, one I suspect you know. The short version though: Paul Musseveni isn't dead, neither is my mother. They're playing house together, attempting to create an even more powerful, more unbeatable Dragan race, designed to take over the Commonwealth – and everything else along with it, with them ruling supreme over the Known Worlds. To achieve their goals, they started to build a fleet on Ral Parthia, abducted me, experimented on me and harmed me and mine more than even I would have thought possible. And now they're going to war. Did I leave something out, Rommie?" she then asked, cocking her head towards her ship's hologram, but didn't wait for an answer. "Yes, I think that's just about it… Oh no, there's one more thing: Dylan's dead. They killed him. And you know what, Trance? There was just one significance Tarn Vedra ever held for me: it was Dylan's home and he loved it. Without him though it's just another dirtball in space to me, like there are so many, many others. Do you still think I'm bluffing?"

Her voice, her eyes, her whole attitude displayed a deadly calmness. Trance swallowed, cleared her throat, but despite all her efforts her eyes just spilled over, tears running freely down her cheeks. A sigh caught in her throat. She tried to dry her cheeks with the back of her hands, but it didn't help much, the crying intensifying. The despair evident in the golden beauty didn't seem to touch the human in any way, though.

In the stillness of Command, under the stern gazes of both _Andromeda _and her captain the sobs grew louder and louder. And then, all of a sudden, the child-like avatar dropped to her knees, bending over like someone in pain, her head buried in her arms.

"I'm sorry," she cried aloud, "I'm so very sorry… But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my decision. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it…"

"I know," Beka admitted coldly. "I never thought it was. But I demand to know whose decision it was. When it was felled. And why."

The beautiful head went up, imploring eyes searching for hers.

"Why?" Trance asked her back, sounding pained. "You know why. Because they think that you are The One."

"They? You mean your people?"

The girl nodded, distressed.

"And why do they think that? I mean: Dylan was Vedran, Paradine… Why not him?"

Trance merely shook her head, averting her eyes again.

"You don't want to answer that? Shall I answer it then?"

Anew the only response was another shaking of the bronze-curled head.

"You know what?" _Andromeda_'s hologram suddenly let her voice be heard into the deafening silence. "**I** want you to answer."

Looking over at her ship's image, Beka smiled with sadness.

"I will, although you don't really need me to figure it out, Rommie. We all know the answer already."

The hologram frowned.

"We do?"

The captain nodded.

"Just think about Arkology, Rommie. About Samsara, about Enga's Redoubt. Or Witchhead…"

"I don't…" the ship began, but stopped. "I… I'm not particularly keen on thinking about those. None of us ever was. We all would have preferred those events to not ever have happened."

Beka sighed.

"Yes, we all – and Dylan even more than any other of us…"

"What are you trying to say?"

The captain pressed her lips together.

"Tell me, Trance, the first time we encountered the Worldship…"

The girl winced lightly upon hearing herself addressed again.

"…why did you not insist for Dylan to stay here and me to go down with Rommie to try and get Harper, Tyr and Rev back?"

"Dylan had far more combat-experience…"

"Oh, crap, Trance. Dylan had been dead just hours before. He was in no shape to go into combat with so much as a teddy – and as medical officer it would have been possible for you to keep him aboard, had you cared to do so. Only you didn't. And it had nothing to do with him being better suited to be down there; it was all about **me **being better suited to do what had to be done on the _Andromeda_."

"What do you mean, Beka?" the ship threw in, sounding as intrigued as possible for her.

Her captain tilted her head, looking from Trance to the hologram and back again, before turning fully towards her ship's image.

"When Trance said, right before I was supposed to fire at the Worldship, that I'm the right person at the right time in the right place… You weren't kidding, were you, Trance? Because if we had switched places, if I had went and Dylan stayed aboard… With Tyr, Harper, Rev, Rommie and me down there he never would have dropped that nova, right? He would have stood there, frozen, just like he did at Witchhead before I urged him to go on and push the button, he would have refused to abandon us, just like he did with those idiots on Arkology… You see, Rommie, our Trance here – or maybe her people, the Lambent Kith, whoever – **someone **thinks that I am The One, since I am obviously everything Dylan was, albeit – when push comes to shove – minus his compassion."

A discreet beeping suddenly interrupted her. _Andromeda_'s larger-than-life head appeared on the left one of the central monitor.

"Captain," she said briskly, "there are four Commonwealth-cruisers approaching us. We're being hailed."

Fixing Trance with eyes narrowed to slits, Beka slightly straightened herself up.

"Open a channel, Rommie. Identify yourself, tell them you have the Commodore of the Commonwealth-fleet aboard, that we are here taking care of unfinished business – and tell them to stand down."

Slowly regaining her feet, Trance threw a pleading, almost defeated look at Beka.

"I think that we are finished," she murmured in a low tone.

"We're finished when **I** say so!" the human thundered at her.

Trance visibly flinched under the sharpness of Beka's tone.

"And if not, would you really destroy me?" She searched her friend's face wide-eyed, growing more and more incredulous as the seconds passed without any reaction changing the icy mask. The girl sighed. "I… I always knew you that you can hate passionately. But I didn't think you could be that cold, too."

"I don't hate you, Trance."

"No, you just despise me."

"I don't despise you, either. I am just wondering how it might not have occurred to you right from the very start how… immensely sad, how pathetic this all would play out. You doubt that I will really take you down? You wonder how I can be so cold? You… your… _people" _Beka stressed, this time unable to suppress a hint of contempt in her voice, "what did you expect strength without mercy, power without kindness to actually look like? How could anyone of you have thought this to be a desirable option? Even when you, when we all were still threatened by the Abyss it did not make much sense, really. And now, with the Abyss gone… It's a preposterous idea, Trance! "

"The Abyss isn't gone, Beka!" Trance cried out. "At least not forever, not for all times. And we just wanted to make sure that next time we'll be ready in time. Because last time he nearly won, Beka – he almost won and you know it better than anyone else."

"So all of this is just a grand plan in order to create a universe stronger and harder, more ruthless and only governed through might and force and coldness, driven by contempt and protected by an arm – **my **arm that never hesitates to strike? You know what? Let me play the devil's advocate for a second. Let's just say I do it, I shape a universe designed to fit my anger, let's just say it succeeds in a final battle to end all battles with the Abyss, Trance. What will happen next? What would such a universe do when it's done with the enemy, hm?"

The girl hung her head down, swallowing, but didn't answer her.

"I'll tell you," Beka continued after a brief pause, "it will turn on itself, it will turn on YOU. You really hope to defeat the Abyss once and for good by… becoming IT? Wasn't that what Tyr tried? Didn't Dylan prove that you **can **save the village without destroying it?"

Trance shook her head in sadness.

"Beka, has it never occurred to you that Dylan's way might have been tried and simply didn't work out in the long run?"

"Really? When, Trance? And by whom? The Nietzscheans who are ruling every tiny bit they possess with iron fists? The Vedrans, who created an empire by forcing everyone, who didn't agree with them, at gun point into it? The Old Commonwealth, that talked of ideals and freedom, only to compromise on them whenever they felt like it? By your people, who don't hesitate to destroy galaxies in order to protect themselves?"

Blue eyes drilled mercilessly into the soft, brown gaze. When Trance didn't answer, Beka shook her head:

"No, Trance, don't delude yourself. Dylan's way has never really been tried and found lacking. It has been found difficult – and therefore left untried."

Trance closed her eyes as if she wanted to escape the inescapable that laid in Beka's words. _Andromeda _and her captain watched in silence a multitude of expression chasing one another on the heart-shaped face. And when the brown eyes reopened, Rommie thought that she would have hold her breath, had she had one to do so.

A straightforward, clear, resolved look met Beka's unblinking eyes.

"What do you want, Beka?" Trance asked, unnecessarily. She knew what Beka wanted – and she was prepared to give it to her. The blonde captain could see it in her eyes. But she answered, regardless:

"A couple of days ago I wanted to wipe all Dragans out of existence. But I'll be damned, Trance… I will be damned if I let myself turn into someone Dylan would have hated. I'll be damned if I let you turn tail and desert like I did once. I'll be damned if I let everything Dylan stood for die with him. I want you to come back. I want you to help us… Harper, Rhade, Rommie, Doyle… to help ME to find a better way to beat this. I want you to choose us, your friends, above your people, because your people are wrong and Dylan was right."

"Do you realize what you're asking of me? What you want me to do?"

"I want you to sacrifice your place among your people for the greater good. I am asking you to make a gambit, Trance."


	55. Chapter 54

A/N: The dialogue between Beka and Dylan in the middle section of the chapter is quoted (hopefully correctly) from season 5's "The Test". No copyright-infringement intended.

**Chapter 54**

„If you plan on telling me how one can mend something broken and get something different, maybe even better out of it: I wouldn't bother, Trance."

The coldness in Harper's voice matched the iciness of his clear, water-blue eyes.

She sighed. They'd been through this before. Years ago, right after she had 'switched places' with her younger self, she had been met with the same distant, hurting, stand-offish manner. All her friends had displayed a doubtful puzzlement, a distrusting, yet also expectant manner drenched in something else, something that at first she couldn't quite define.

Until it dawned on her that it was a mixture of both anxiety and sorrow: not understanding her new, mature, strong, at times even imposing, commanding, almost menacingly martial demeanor, they all regarded her with some sort of suspicious awe that easily touched something strongly resembling fear. At the same time she could distinctly see in their eyes a hurt, almost a longing that left her nonplussed, until she finally realized that they were in mourning – in mourning for the purple, happy, sweet, positive, caring girl they were used to know as Trance, a presence that they all missed sorely, and for whose absence her new self was less of a consolation and more of a painful reminder of what they once had and lost.

That her new self was her old one, that underneath the adult polish the caring, sweet girl was still there and hurting because of their rejection… She never let them in on this particular secret. And then she finally breached through their defenses, tearing down the walls they had erected. But it had been easier then: Dylan had been around to help, to give her a chance and make it clear that he expected the rest to follow suit. And Beka had been the first one to abide by it, unlike Dylan not alone setting an example, but taking it even further, literally demanding it of Harper, of Rommie, even of Tyr to go along with the expectations of _Andromeda_'s two commanding officers regarding their acceptance of Trance's change.

Beka. Who later-on, on Seefra, had even forced Rhade into submission, imposing her will on Doyle's a bit jealous reluctance towards Trance, as well. And who had now brought her back to them all, but then had left her to face them: Rommie, Doyle, Rhade… and Harper on her own.

Trance understood, them and Beka. Or at least, that was what she kept telling herself. But that didn't make things any less painful.

She had not for a second really believed that Beka would have carried out her threat. The missile bombardment had been practically harmless, and Trance responded to it more out of a sense of duty, out of friendship… And because she knew indeed what had happened and was hurting herself from the loss she too had suffered, hurting maybe even more because she had not been able to prevent any of this. So she had come to the Andromeda, prepared to meet with pain, to some extent however also hoping for comfort – that she could give and receive.

The Beka she met there though… In a distant future, one that Trance had already prevented from happening, she had known such a Beka, one that stood alone against the universe, with only Trance left by her side, a battered, scarred, marred Beka, harmed beyond repair in both her body and – although to a lesser extent – in her mind. And yet even that Beka had been The One that the Lambent Kith had foresaw to protect them. Trance remembered that past, avoided future well, remembered how she had ached for the price that both she and Beka had to pay back then, how she had vowed to not let that happen again. Well, it seemed as if she had succeeded there.

Alas, the Beka she had met with now was even scarier. As sharp, as unbowed and as beautiful as ever, outwardly unchanged. Yet cold to the point of seeming almost soulless. Watching her, Trance had to admit that Beka had an easy game at driving her point home: there was nothing more frightening than merciless, soulless beauty, existing merely for the sake of… just being – and not caring if it was there to stay. Nonetheless, Trance had had from the very beginning her doubts about her people's grasp of the complex nature that really was Rebekkah Valentine. Yes, Beka was indeed the ultimate survivor, more ruthless than Dylan, more determined than Harper and certainly more independent from any inescapable genetic predestination than any Nietzschean, Human, Vedran, Perseid, Magog or any other sentient being Trance had ever come across.

Born in and to slipstream, Beka had no ties. Really no ties at all. There was no planet, no system, no tradition, no sentimental value, no family or friends, not even a habit Beka could not rid herself of, if she thought that it would serve her interests better. It made her completely unpredictable, was just as much a part of her beauty and strength as it was a curse and ultimately a flaw, strangely though one that put everyone who had to deal with her at an enormous disadvantage: how was one to hope to master no matter what kind of relationship with someone who felt basically no bound to anything or anybody? Because even her love for the _Eureka Maru_ was in the end no more than a comfortable pretense: if really pushed enough, Beka could rid herself even of that and move to the next tool enabling her to lead her life exactly as she deemed fit. And then the miracle happened, Dylan came along - and Beka Valentine finally found something she couldn't simply shed like an old, useless skin.

Quietly observing her for more than five years with that uncanny omniscience of hers, Trance had noticed it almost from the very start, analyzed it, dissected and put it back together countless times, the result always in the end proving the Lambent Kith's judgment on how Beka would in the end respond to their schemes all wrong.

Unlike Tyr Anasazi, Beka had not agreed to join Dylan's mission for the benefit of some long-term interests, for she simply had none. Without an alertly burning conscience like Rev, Beka had not been seduced by Dylan's ideals, either. Unburdened by a multitude of genial or almost genial ideas, the captain of the _Maru _had not been bought in by the sheer magnitude of possibilities the _Andromeda Ascendant_ could provide her with, the way it had happened with Harper. And since she lacked Trance's knowledge of what dangers there were ahead of them, Beka saw no reason to submit herself to the goal of building an alliance to protect herself any more than she could do so by looking out for herself all on her own.

Beka had accepted Dylan's outstretched hand for a simple reason: curiosity. Why she had stayed on though… That was an entirely different matter altogether.

When – during their first encounter with the Restorians – Dylan had placed Beka in a spot where she had to do exactly as he told her in order to survive, Beka had understood that she had finally met her equal, someone who – if need be – could be just as ruthless, dispassionate and efficient as herself. When afterwards he came to apologize to her for having done so, she began to suspect that his not being ruthless and dispassionate as a rule was not a matter of constriction, but one of deliberate choice. Trance had seen how this realization had irritated and intrigued Beka to the point of making her want to take a closer look at that. And she had seen how from one closer look to another, Beka had started to bargain, to try and strike a deal with universe itself: that if someone like Dylan was for real, could exist, then she would trade her freedom of ties for freedom of choice – one like his.

Still: for a very long time after they had met, Beka time and again thought him to be stupid. It was much easier that way than to understand what his very existence clearly demonstrated: that the reason why they - along with everybody else she had known until then - were so disgusted with the universe, was because they were themselves slightly disgusting. It was so much easier to just think **him** a fool than to face the shame, the embarrassement, the fear that what she always neglected to acknowledge had been true all along: that one could be fast **without** being ruthless, that one could be strong **and** gentle, that survival and compassion did not exclude one another. But once she understood...

Seeing Beka risk her own brother for Dylan, risk the _Maru _to get him back from Arazia's prison planet, turning back the _Andromeda _to crash her into the Worldship when she had thought Dylan dead, Trance understood that the condition for Beka to stick to the deal she had struck with the universe and herself, was Dylan to be there, where she could see him, feel him time and again restrain himself, bow down his neck, stretch out his hand to others not constrained by some necessity and only for as long as suited him, but out of his own insight and free will.

Afterwards, after the Worldship, after the Cetus, after the Derivas, after Tyr, after the Abyss – after she had seen Beka time after time attempting to throw away her own life when she had thought Dylan gone; and more than ever after, her memory finally restored on Seefra, Trance had seen the old, unbound Beka resurface, realizing maybe for the first time how immensely cold and inhumane that absolute freedom of hers from all ties could really look like. After all of this the avatar of Tarn-Vedra's sun began to grasp how large a gap Dylan had closed with the ties he had built between himself and Beka, how large a step Beka had dared to take by allowing it.

There had been many things Dylan had done on Seefra that Trance was thankful for. But once she understood Beka's nature, there had been nothing Trance had felt more gratitude for than Dylan's untiring effort to stretch out his hand to Beka, again and again, no matter how often she kept hitting it away with a vengeance, until finally – to Trance's immense relief – Beka had accepted it, letting Dylan bind her again to him.

It had confirmed Trance's suspicions that a universe that needed the old Beka to be kept safe and alive, wasn't safe at all. But she didn't worry, since she was sure that there was no way old Beka would ever appear again. So she saw the fact that she had not managed to convince her people to accept her assessment on the character of 'The One' they had chosen to be their champion as her greatest failure.

Whether one was human, Magog, Perseid, a war-ship or even belonging to Trance's kind: fear made sentient beings fell strange, stupid decisions. They'd done it with indulging the Nietzschean rebellion after Brandenburg Tor, then by placing their hopes in the Derivas twice, they'd tried it again with the Pyrians at Samsara, before they offered their support for Tyr's attempts to establish a new Nietzschean empire in league with some of the Collectors. Each time Trance had had her doubts about it, each time those doubts had been ignored. She was but one, her supporters were few, the others were many – and she had been outvoted each and every time.

Somehow though she had thought that after the Abyss had been defeated once more, with the Worldship gone and knowing that of them all she was the only one who had had the opportunity to really understand the way Beka functioned, they would listen to her at least on that matter. When they had not… It had brought Trance to her knees.

She'd tried to shove all responsibility away from her and her kind, tried to lure Beka away from the right track, and then she ran away, simply went into hiding. But once the events had begun to unfold, she had known that Beka would in the end remember, add all parts together and come up with the answer. As she had known that then at the very latest she would see again the old, unbound, unbowed and yes, the uncaring, ruthless Beka reemerge, as well. Only to disappear once and for good.

For what the past years had taught Trance beyond the shadow of a doubt, what Seefra had confirmed for her, was that what had brought the old Beka about had not been the loss of Dylan. **That **Beka had been brought about by meeting with a Dylan who, from her point of view, had finally given in to the temptation of disregarding all other needs and pains but his own, who for once seemed unable to smilingly, gracefully take a step back from his conquered position to let others catch up with him, as he had done before so many times in the past.

From where Beka was standing, the Dylan who had led them on a foolish quest for some long gone, long forgotten presumed legacy in the battle for Arkology, the Dylan whom she met on Seefra had betrayed not her, not them, but Dylan, that Dylan who once had with maddeningly calm patience taught her about how all, how everything could be a matter of free choice.

Trance knew that this had been what Beka had found herself unable to forgive him on Seefra, and she had seen how long – with this fundamental trust once destroyed – it had taken Dylan to prove her wrong, how hard their way back to each other had turned out in the end, how little Beka had been willing to accept the bases of their friendship again, how she fought him on that, mocking, taunting, blaming, tempting him time and time again to make a false move, to strike out at her, to confirm her reproaches:

_"We're not here out of free choice."_

_"I'm getting a distinct 'It's all Dylan's fault'-vibe."_

_"I wonder why."_

_"So do I, Beka…"_

But he had not taken the bait.

_"Dylan, when will you start to look out for number one?"_

Standing behind the counter of Harper's bar, Trance had held her breath upon hearing Beka after so many struggles throw at Dylan what she really accused him of, the ultimate question to which she so much feared the answer.

_"When I know that it won't do to me what it does to you," _had been his straight reply while he kept looking at her with eyes opened wide, sincere with regret, but at the same time full of hope, of expectation, refusing to accept that Beka was lost to him. It had delivered the final blow that in the end brought down the armor of comfortable, habitual harshness, selfishness and detachment that she had built around herself on Seefra. By the end of the day, the Prius-incident had been over, leaving them all changed as if a switch had finally been turned on. Dylan was back to being the captain of the _Andromeda_, his crew was back to being one crew, and Beka was back to being their XO, Dylan's one solid rock, the one he trusted as much as he trusted himself to think, to act like, to **be **him, if needed.

More than anything else it had been this, what had made Trance sure that her people's expectations of Beka were nothing but wishful thinking, and ever since there had been many proves that her judgment was right. Their latest conversation, the powerful demonstration of how far Beka could go, yet refused to… It had not really been necessary as both, Beka and Trance, were well aware of. Not to them, anyway. To some extent though it was good to have everything said and done and openly acknowledged, especially since the fear Trance had displayed had not been fake, not all of it anyway.

Trance was afraid, not **of **but **for **Beka, for them all – and to a certain degree also for herself: the cold, soulless Beka hadn't happened, the mindless, unhesitating arm striking down all possible foes of the Lambent Kith had not become reality. The new captain of the _Andromeda Ascendant _would protect the New Commonwealth, the one Dylan Hunt had wanted, had referred to as HIS Commonwealth, the only one that Beka Valentine was willing to keep safe – and not even that at all cost, regardless of the consequences. She would keep it safe on her own terms, Dylan's terms. If she had been able to learn them, then they all could.

_"Dylan's way has never really been tried and found lacking. It has been found difficult – and therefore left untried."_

Beka had already a long, long time ago made her gambit, had sacrificed her old, self-concerned, detached (and therefore safe from real hurt) self for Dylan's belief that survival with nothing to live for was meaningless, that one could choose to be both fast and patient, strong and yet not ruthless. And she had asked for Trance to now follow her on this.

Spending the flight back to Terrazed with her on Command, in companionable silence rarely interrupted by shreds of conversation, in which both friends tried to express their regret for the hurt they had caused each other, Trance had seen Beka's determination to stick to those rules. Under the blue eyes, that had begun anew to sparkle with the old warmth that had been missing so long, she had felt her own resolve strengthen, her own courage to stand up once more against her own kind brighten.

But that had been then. Confronted now with an angered, stone-cold Harper, whose tired, weary face looked older, more mature, with lines and wrinkles that Trance could not remember to have seen there before, she felt again the maddening, crushing waves of despair over what she perceived as her failure to protect her friends from her people and that she had surrendered to under Beka's and _Andromeda_'s accusing glares assailing her anew.

_„If you plan on telling me how one can mend something broken and get something different, maybe even better out of it: I wouldn't bother, Trance."_

She sighed. By the Divine, would she have to go through this with every single one of them? But then a clear voice sharply cut through her weary musings:

"Trance was right then, Harper. What makes you think she'd be wrong now?"

"Gee, I don't know, boss…" the Terran snapped, while both he and Trance turned around to face the opened doors to Harper's favorite machine shop, that framed _Andromeda_'s captain. "It might well be fact that she had then saved my life, while now she simply decided to let Dylan die and just ran away."

"It wasn't **my **decision," Trance vehemently defended herself. In a flash she covered the few steps separating her from her former best friend, whom she stubbornly persisted in still seeing like that, and grabbed for his shoulders. "It. Wasn't. My. Decision!" she repeated firmly, her face close to his, her eyes spilling over with all the pain and fury and despair over her people's schemes, over the accusation she could see in his eyes, over the grief and sorrow all of this had brought upon her and her friends.

Just as quickly, Beka stood by her side.

"You heard the lady, Mr. Harper!" she said quietly, placing her hands firmly on both Trance's and Harper's shoulders.

The young man let his look wander off from Beka's face to Trance and then back again.

"And you believe her?" he asked hesitating.

"Harper," Beka said in a low, intense voice, "this is you, me, Trance: this is us! Yes, she ran, but so did I – and I bet that deep down you wished you could have run, too."

Again the engineer threw a pensive look at Trance, and then, slowly, he nodded, a small, still somewhat doubting smile appearing in his eyes, one that didn't quite make it to his lips, however. Nonetheless, seeing it Trance felt like a weight was lifted from her.

"Harper…" she pleaded again.

He nodded once more – and then his arms went out to her and Beka. There was a brief moment of silence and relief, as they all three – the old, battered and yet miraculously somehow still there crew of the equally old, battered _Eureka Maru_ – stood there, embracing each other. It ended, when Beka cleared her throat.

"Right, people! Let's move on," she ordered in a slightly shaky voice that wanted itself steady, but couldn't quite live up to its wish. "Harper, I still need your anti-proton fusion catalyst and that grav-converter, but you can forget the Rosies. Instead I want you and Trance to pay some attention to that old Dragan slipstream scout…"

A mischievous, sneaky gleam appeared in Trance's eyes, one matched by a similarly understanding one in Harper's.

"Ugh," he grunted, "you wouldn't by any chance want us to look for another way to Ral Parthia, would you?"

"Of course she does, Seamus," Trance answered him instead, almost basking under Beka's wide grin, "and since this time it's us and not some hyperventilating Perseid like Hasturi looking for it, we might even find one that doesn't place us right between Scylla and Carybdis."

"Anything staying under 41 hours of continuous streaming would be greatly appreciated, guys," was the note _Andromeda_'s captain left on. "Harper, Trance, go ahead, dazzle me!"


	56. Chapter 55

Many, many thanks, Squid109.

**Chapter 55**

The longer the conversation went on, the more the frown on the younger woman's forehead deepened.

"I don't understand," Captain Rebekkah B. Valentine said again in a clipped, precise manner. "I thought that such decisions were the prerogative of the Commodore."

Isabella Ortiz sighed. She hated it when the First Triumvir simply decided that she was the right person for tough, unpleasant personal discussion on decisions felled without her approval in the first place.

"They are," she conceded in a stressed tone. "They are. But, as things often happen, it seems we already have our plate full with selling some of our other previous decisions on personnel to the Senate, the different…" she hesitated briefly, but then continued, her fingers signaling ironical quotation marks, "… I suppose we can call them 'interested parties', the media, the electorate and so on and so forth. And as we are now a triumvir short and very likely to have a replacement that might not be as much of one mind with us as Commander Rhade was…"

Madam Triumvir let her phrase fade out in the most ominous manner. The blonde bit her lip.

"Decisions like the one to have me named captain of the_ Andromeda Ascendant_ and Commodore of the fleet?" she finally asked.

Tri-Ortiz nodded curtly.

"I see," Beka added, her eyes narrowed to pensive, weighing slits. She saw indeed. If the two remaining triumvirs thought that they might get a new colleague even more reluctant to her nomination than Telemachus Rhade originally had been, then matters could really get nasty for the two politicians. And her. Which meant that the way things seemed to be at present, it could get pretty nasty for the whole Commonwealth. Still…

"Argosy-intel - and we have no way of knowing exactly how reliable this information is - tells us that the Dragans are still some time away from finishing with their preparations for war. But they **are **preparing and sooner or later they will be ready…"

"Eventually," Isabella Ortiz interrupted.

"Yes," Beka conceded. "Only: 'eventually' in this case means months, not years. And not even THAT many months, at that…"

"I know." Tri-Ortiz dark eyes looked grave. "And I understand completely. It's just that we right now need to fell a personnel decision more popular with the brass and the senators who know. The price for the mission you want is high. Effectively blocking the Crimeean System from any kind of traffic is both time- and cost-consuming. You want it, you get it, but then we need someone in charge of the whole thing whom everyone informed knows and approves of. Admiral Fremont is that one… And really: he is a good man."

"I'm not doubting his qualities as a person," said Beka "and I'm sure that he can be the right man when put in the right place. I'm just not completely sure that patrolling the Crimeean System is the right place for him. I know how much the mission costs: I'm pulling ships away that many might think to be of better use elsewhere, ships that will have to be replaced somehow. I can't really tell for how long I'll need them there nor can I guarantee that there will be no trouble."

"Of course not," Madam Triumvir agreed with her, "if you could guarantee that, there would be no need to try and seal off the system."

"Precisely. All I know is that it is absolutely vital that for the time being nothing goes in or comes out of there. The system's huge, impossible to navigate, there's an awful lot of space to cover, Fremont won't be having that many ships at his disposal – and I'm fairly certain that the Dragans will try something. Are you sure, are you absolutely sure that he can pull this off flawlessly?"

Isabella Ortiz sighed again. She wasn't. Admiral Fremont was indeed a good man, but he was old, worse: he was old-fashioned even – and he had gained his honors with the Terrazed Home Guard, mainly as commander of lancer regiments in a time when most of Terrazed's military endeavors consisted of defending the system. He'd spent most of his professional life planet-side. But he was well-liked, popular, well-known and very well-connected. Under such circumstances it mattered little that his experience in space was limited, and his knowledge of Nietzscheans based on the ones who were part of Terrazed's old, Commonwealth-loyal colonists like the Rhade-family. Both triumvirs had found themselves quite alone in their reluctance to trust him with the mission of sealing off the Crimeean System as required by Captain Valentine, who had originally proposed Lieutenant Doyle for the job. Yet Doyle, even though she was _Andromeda_'s former avatar, was not only the 'new kid on the block' with the Commonwealth: as far as Fremont's supporters were concerned she was a Vedran – and that meant a strangeness surpassed only by that of Captain Hunt himself, who did however have the great advantage of being seen as a legend (and a meanwhile conveniently dead one as well, which always helped a lot). And she was an android.

The New Commonwealth had gotten used to a great many things the motley crew of the _Andromeda Ascendant _had imposed on them more or less as accomplished facts along the way. Like having androids named captain of warships. Like having avatars in charge of planet development programs. Or not attached to warships. But having them now also in charge of entire military operations seemed like taking it just a tad too far.

There were but few people who knew that the new Commodore of the Commonwealth-fleet had ordered a permanent blockade of the Crimeean System, and with even fewer people knowing about what lay there, the order also made precious little sense to most who knew about it, seeming like an unnecessary, costly, stupid whim. With only a handful Argosy agents, the two remaining triumvirs, the secretary of defence, four representatives on the security panel of the Commonwealth federal government, Jonah Draeger and the senior officers of the_ Andromeda Ascendant_ the only ones with actual insight into the full matter, there was no way putting Doyle in command of the mission would have sat well with most of the politicians involved. Tri-Lorn and Tri-Ortiz had known from the start that the odds were against it, and when the proposal came to let Admiral Freemont lead the operation at Crimeea they recognized it for what it really was: a veiled order to no longer test the patience of the Commonwealth's 'high and mighty' on the decision-making levels with further awkward requests.

To some degree Rebekkah Valentine understood; and she hoped that the woman seated in front of her, whom she had come to respect and trust on more than one level, understood as well that her objections were not mere stubbornness. The simple truth was that Beka was concerned. Trance and Harper's work on the slipstream-scout had proved tougher than expected, the grav-converter was still experimental (maybe not as much as it had been the first time around when Dylan had insisted on trying it out to retrieve Tyr and Beka, but still a lot more than_ Andromeda_'s new captain really cared to take any chances with) and the fusion catalyst, although ready to go, was pretty much useless as long as they could not be sure of the other two devices. They needed time – and sealing Crimeea off was the only way to make sure that they got enough of it.

"Captain," said Tri-Ortiz tying to convince the other woman of something she herself was not really convinced of, "as far as I understood, patrolling Crimeea is extremely difficult because of the system's instable conditions. Maybe we could simply try to monitor Illion more closely, to ensure that even if something comes out of Crimeea it will not reach the Dragans."

"No, I'm afraid that won't work. No matter what happens, the Drago-Khatzov would probably notice that and I'd rather not alert them on how much we know or suspect already. They already have a too good an idea of what assets we have, and don't have. Any more might give away every kind of advantage we can hope for in order to surprise them."

"So this is our strategy on this one: surprise?"

"Our strategy at this stage is to play everything by the book," Beka answered.

Ortiz frowned. "By which book?"

A small smile appeared on the Beka's face."Why, Captain Hunt's private book, of course. I'll try to go by his three major steps of warfare for as long as I can."

The triumvir eyed her with a slightly curious air. "Which ones are those?" she finally asked when the silence threatened to stretch itself out a bit too much.

"Well," Beka drawled, still smiling, "1st step: 'Veil your intentions and keep the element of surprise on your side until time comes to assume the offensive'. 2nd step: 'Kick your opponents hard – or not, or change tactics, making sure that they are constantly so surprised that they don't get to properly react at all'." She stood up while still talking. "Okay, I assume we're done here. I won't fight you on this anymore, but I really hope that Fremont is up to the task."

"Wait a minute," Isabella Ortiz protested. "You haven't told me step 3."

Beka's smile broadened."'Make sure you're damned brilliant with steps 1 and 2, because the odds for you to get a chance at step 3 are miserable'."

/

„Incoming message, Captain!"

Beka Valentine glanced up from her console.

"Go ahead, Rommie," she replied.

The face on the monitor didn't disappear to make room for whoever was trying to contact the _Andromeda_. "Captain's eyes only!" the image hurriedly explained upon noticing the slightly inquiring look in her commanding officer's eyes.

"The Commonwealth?".

"Tri-Lorn," her ship answered.

There was a tiny movement as Beka seemed to stand even more erect, briefly squaring her shoulders. Observing from behind, Raphael Valentine could not suppress a small smile, seeing his sister fall into what he liked to call her 'High Guard'-mode – and that still never failed to strike him as odd as well as impress him, whether in a good or less good way he couldn't really tell.

"I'll take it in my office," Beka said and turned around to leave Command.

/

"We'll be with you in one hour. Valentine out!"

Switching her viewscreen off, Beka remained seated behind the glass desk, pensively staring straight ahead. Occasionally her hand reached out towards a small crystal figure of a richly robed woman until she finally picked it up as she wearily lifted herself from her seat, moving over to the left side of the room, where there was a small table and two comfortable armchairs, matching another similar set on the right. The only difference between the two sets of furniture was the tables: the right one still displayed Dylan's board of Go, the one on the left held an elaborate set of Chess board. Unlike the Go board, the chess board was not empty, but displayed an ongoing game.

Still deep in her thoughts the woman gave a long look at the board, where a massive number of black figures, that had taken out the crystal knights already, were threatening the white king, who was defended by a rook. With a frown, Beka picked up one of the lost knights, her hand closing to a tight fist around him.

"Knight, Death…" she murmured softly, placing the crystalline queen at the white rook's side, a thin smile appearing on her lips, "and the Devil," she finished her sentence. Leaving the table she returned to her desk, hitting the comm-link.

"Lieutenant Commander Harper, Lieutenant Gemini, report to my office right away."

"Aye, Boss," she heard her engineer's casual response.

Not more than just about four minutes later her doors slid aside, revealing a Seamus Zelasny Harper slightly out of breath, with Trance Gemini less than two steps behind him.

"Beka?" the avatar of Tarn-Vedra's sun inquired vaguely.

"Harper, Trance, come in."

"What's up, Boss?" Harper wanted to know.

"Just the usual,"_ Andromeda_'s captain answered with a grim expression. "We're running out of time."

/

The senior staff of the Commonwealth's flagship was assembled around a huge, mahogany table placed at the far end of the equally huge office of the First Triumvir. Seated at the head of the table was Tri-Lorn, the tightness of his face matching their somber looks.

"I can assure you, Captain Valentine…" he began. He shouldn't have bothered. With a barely suppressed snarl, Rebekkah Valentine jumped to her feet.

"You can **assure **me of nothing!" she hissed.

"Captain Valentine, I know…"

"As a matter of fact," broke in Rhade's his deep voice overriding Tri -Lorn's, "you don't **know **anything either. Not more than you told us, anyway…" he concluded, a slight sarcastic bitterness evident in his voice.

"And what you **do **know," added Harper, "isn't really that great!"

At the other of the table Isabella Ortiz could, despite the seriousness of the situation, barely suppress a grin. The blockade around Crimeea had been breached roughly 48 hours ago. Admiral Fremont and his small flotilla of LRS-, LOS and GDF-ships had been taken completely by surprise when a Nietzschean fleet of about 2000 Garuda-class vessels had appeared in the system, dispersing almost immediately and fleeing its instable environment in all directions at once. Why Fremont had been taken so thoroughly by surprise hadn't been made clear in the message the courier had brought in. The missive simply stating that almost all Nietzschean vessels had managed to escape while the admiral had lost 1 EV-class cruiser, 4 group defense frigates and no less than 12 Major-Toms, which accounted for nearly a third of the ships he had at his disposal. There had been no word from the Admiral since the initial message.

"Agreed, it's a set-back. But you see..." Tri-Lorn started a new attempt to pacify his irate Commodore and her staff, "no-one can really explain how all of this could have happened."

"Oh, I believe **I** can explain," Rommie inserted at that in a suspiciously even tone, standing up and placing herself behind her fellow avatar Doyle, who was displaying a thoroughly bored, uninterested, not involved look. "Your oh! so experienced parade admiral didn't really take any of the things we told him seriously and went in completely unprepared…"

"That's not quite true," the First Triumvir attempted to intervene on behalf of the absent commander, "the admiral did listen, was well aware of the importance of his mission and had made plans…"

"Oh, I suppose that's all right then," Harper muttered under his breath.

Beka Valentine exploded at the same time. "Really?" she asked, venom dripping from her voice. "Did he now? What kind of plans? To sit around in comfort, watching holo-vids, doubting that anything will ever happen there? What has he done since?"

"What's your point?" Tri-Ortiz cut into the discussion.

"My point is that we don't know what has happened since. If more ships have arrived. If he managed to keep them where they were or at least follow a few of them. I wanted him there because I feared the even remote possibility that the wormhole might open and spit out Nietzscheans. Even with everything taken into account, even with Doyle in command, chances are good that no-one could have stopped all those ships. What I want to know now is however what has been done since?"

"We don't know," Tri-Lorn admitted lowly. "We're still waiting for more news."

"What had Fremont planned for such an event?" asked Trance, who up to this point had kept silent.

"His plan only foresaw an effective blockade…" the triumvir answered her.

"Everyone has plans only for **before **they get hit," Beka stated in a bitter tone.

Silence, heavy and awkward, descended on the people assembled around the table.

"What now?" Tri-Ortiz interrupted it at long last.

Rebekkah Valentine shrugged.

"Now that we got hit? We get back up. What else? Accept that we might need a step 3 after all."


	57. Chapter 56

Many, many thanks, squid109!

**Chapter 56**

Once back aboard the _Andromeda_, Beka moved swiftly. Within two hours she had called in a meeting with her senior staff, discussed the strategy and dispatched Doyle in the _Eureka Maru_ to take over command on the border of Crimeea, as had been originally intended. Trance and Harper were ordered to get back to work on the slipstream-scout and dismissed even before the meeting was adjourned.

"You're in a rush," Rhade stated, looking at his captain with a pensive, slightly doubtful look.

"Wouldn't you be?" Beka retorted sharply. "2000 Garuda-sized vessels! If they were fully manned..."

"Well, yes..." the commander shrugged. "Some thousands of Dragans more... What difference will they make?"

"First of all:" Beka began enumerating, counting down on her fingers, "I think we have just about all Dragans we can handle on our hands already and not doing too well. I'm not too keen to see how we go about with some thousands more of them. Secondly: they were coming out of Crimeea, so we can safely assume that it was that hole from hell leading to and from Ral Parthia opening up to spit them out. And last, not least: if they made it through and lived to tell the tale, then Musseveni got closer to reaching his race of super-Nietzs than we can afford to find out."

"In so short a time?"

The woman bit her lip.

"Five months..." she said slowly. "All in all he had about five months at his disposal. In THIS, OUR timeline."

"But?" Rhade urged her to go on, judging from the frown on her face that she wasn't done yet.

"But..." Beka sighed. "The but is that time is not a reliable notion in those pocket universes the Vedrans create. You were stuck more than 21 months on Seefra, Trance had to spend over a decade in the system, Harper struggled on for three years alone and more than one year with us, Dylan was there about 14 months and I had the pleasure for about 18 of them. Yet when we made it back to our time and place, they told us that barely a week had elapsed since the battle of Arkology."

"I thought that the problem was Trance screwing up with the tesseracting..."

"Even so, Rhade: we spent over a year there fighting for our lives, and yet when we came back they had thought us gone for just some days only. When Dylan came to fetch me on Myrmidon I knew that I had been on Ral Parthia for about 4 weeks, and before that I had spent about a week in the Illion system. And some days thereafter, too. And yet, Dylan was swearing that to you I had been gone for just about two weeks only..."

"That's true..." the Nietzschean admitted. "So you think..."

"I think we can't exclude the possibility that we don't really know how much time Musseveni really had on his hands. If his idea works, their pilots will rule the slipstream. And their fighters... He injected Jonah Draeger with such flash-bots – and they turned him into a mindless, furious killing-machine."

"Indeed, but you said that Dylan couldn't defend himself..."

"Still, he was Dylan. And yet, that... Seefran kludge managed to turn him into pulp in a matter of some few minutes. He could have ripped him apart with his bare hands, Rhade... 1000 armed soldiers like this let loose on Sinti or Castalia..."

She didn't have to finish the sentence. Rhade nodded:

"Sushi!"

Beka threw him a startled look. "I see the time you got to spend with Seamus must have rubbed off..."

"Risk of the job, I suppose," the dark-haired man smiled reluctantly. "So:" he continued, "you're worried – possibly with good reason – that Musseveni might have had enough time to brew his master race, although everything our intel services say indicates otherwise..."

The captain shook her head in disagreement. "They haven't been on Seefra. They haven't been on Ral Parthia. And they weren't there when Paul discovered the reactions Dylan had to the flash-bots. You should have seen him, Rhade! He acted as if he had hit a jackpot."

"But Dylan's dead."

_"It's slowly altering his genetic material, and I suspect that his immune system is battling the new cells with everything it has. Hence the pain attacks... There is no telling whether the flash or his immune system will win in the end. But if he survives this – it might well be that his body also comes up with an own way to combat addiction effects. A new race, Beka, imagine the possibilities..."_

_"What if he doesn't survive it?"  
_  
_"It still is a major break through. And I'll have his body to examine. Either way it's an enormous step forward.."_

The echo of Paul Musseveni's words kept reverberating in Beka's head.

"It didn't seem to matter, Telemachus. I think that Paul would have preferred him alive to perform tests, but even dead the structure of Dylan's DNA seemed to provide more insight than all those experiments before, all those dead Nietzscheans and fetuses gone wrong ever had."

Rhade nodded slowly.

"Okay, you have a point there. So now what? Do you think Doyle and her cut down fleet can do what Fremont couldn't with an intact one?"

"I trust Doyle to do better than Fremont blindfolded and with her arms bound behind her back, but you're right: she probably can't, so we'll have to seal off Illion after all."

"Seal it off? A whole, inhabited, well-defended system? And may I mention: a Dragan one at that... How the hell do we do that?"

"My guess is: badly. But sealing off both Crimeea and Illion badly is still better than our other options. I know we'll need an enormous amount of ships, munitions and people, but it's the only way I see without having to shoot a nova bomb into their sun. Which still might not get the job done. We have no idea if Musseveni's still there, if he hasn't already run off to hide on Ral Parthia, if – supposed we blow the tunnel up next time it opens – there are no other loopholes through which Ral Parthia can be reached – or things from there can reach us..."

"Hence the grav-converter, the fusion catalyst – and Trance and Harper working like crazy on the slip-scout?" asked Rhade.

"The fusion catalyst is no longer on-board," Beka informed him.

Rhade's eyes narrowed."Doyle?"

His captain nodded. "If there's another fleet coming out of that tunnel, I ordered her to replay Witchhead."

The Nietzschean cringed.

"I know," Beka said lowly. "I know, but..."

Her voice trailed off. For a moment both officers were silent, each one lost in their own thoughts on the matter..

Finally Rhade rubbed a weary hand over his eyes as if trying to chase away some shadows "Okay," he said. "Doyle is off to Crimeea, Harper and Trance at work. What do you want me to do?"

"Go to Terrazed, assemble the fleet, call in all our allies and get yourselves to Illion. Once there try the best you can to seal it off. Make sure nothing comes in or gets out... Especially not any kind of reinforcement."

"How am I supposed to tell reinforcement or weapons from other traffic?"

"Exactly. You can't, so we'll just have to put up as perfect a blockade as we can..."

"For how long? Until you starved them back into the stone-age?"

"Rhade, one of your greatest charms is how well you've managed to battle that Nietzschean way of thinking. Nonetheless, it would be nice to see you every once in a while employ some of them...

"You didn't like it much the last time I did..." he smiled.

"I might like it more if you try it sober," she retorted.

"You think they won't let it come to that. You think that you might be able to get them to sit down with you and start talking..."

Beka grinned at him and nodded in approval. Seeing it the man shook his head in slight disbelief.

_Telemachus Rhade_, he thought briefly, _let me introduce to you Captain Rebekkah B. Hunt. Or is it Dylan Valentine?...  
_  
"Hmm," he growled aloud, "and while I shake'm till they break: what will you be up to?"

"Me?" Beka asked innocently, her grin deepening. "Oh, I'll just go relax from all this scheming and planning with a good game."

Rhade tilted his head towards her chessboard.

"Not this time around," she said... "I think a good, old-fashioned game of poker might just do the trick better."

"You have some cards up your sleeve that you intend to use?"

"One. Just one, Rhade."

His eyebrows rose inquiringly. Beka grinned again.

"The Matriarch-card. It's show time!"

"What? You really think you can unite the prides against the Dragans?"

"I don't need the prides. Not all of them, anyway. The Sabra-Jaguar will do nicely. Them and their third largest fleet in the Known Worlds."

"Yes, well... We only have a mutual defense pact with them. And since it very much looks as if it's us attacking the Dragans, I don't see how..."

"You don't have to see **how**. You only have to see **that **I did it."

"Good luck with that!" Rhade exclaimed derisively. "Beka, that's insane! They've so far betrayed us every single time they got a chance..."

The doors sliding open interrupted him, revealing another Valentine walking in.

"Beka, the slipfighter you required is..."

"Raphael, hush! Mommy's fighting..." his sister ordered him in a playful tone.

He stood still, looking back and forth from Rhade to Beka.

"Ah, it's good to see at least _some _routine back..." he muttered loudly enough for the others to overhear him. Then the word Beka had used to describe herself struck home: "_Mommy_?" he echoed out loud.

"Yes, well... I plan to bring in some of my more talented, but also naughtier off-spring..."

Her brother nodded, understanding approval gleaming in his eyes.

"Give my regards to the arch-duke – and that killer-babe of his..."

At hearing Rafe's words Rhade nearly had a coughing fit

"You knew? And you... you approve of this?"

"You don't?" Rafe seemed surprised.

The Nietzschean snorted. "Figures! Here stands big brother letting his sister walk right into the lion's cage, while at the same time mother dearest tries to take over the Commonwealth through a master-race developed by good, old step-dad, heartily supported in this endeavour by baby-sis, who has already proven herself a darling by trying to con big brother..."

Raphael shrugged his shoulders clearly indifferent to Rhade's tirade.

"Chill, Rhade... What family doesn't have its ups and downs occasionally?"

/

"So," Rafe asked at the doors to the slipfighter hanger bay, "you gonna be okay with that Sabra-Jaguar thing?"

"Of course," said Beka.

"Rhade seemed to think otherwise..."

"Rhade's my first officer. It's his prerogative to overreact under the circumstances."

Her brother threw her a long, weighing look. Seeing it, Beka smiled sadly acknowledging what her brother wasn't saying.

"Yes, it's part of the problem. In losing Dylan I failed both personally and professionally."

Rafe cupped her cheek in one of his hands, locking eyes with her.

"You won't fail this time."

Beka laid her hand on his, pressing gently, then turned around and abruptly walked away. _No, I won't,_ she thought.


	58. Chapter 57

**Chapter 57**

"Attention, incoming vessel! This is Venceremos space control: identify yourself!"

Refusing visual contact, the slipfighter's pilot hit the comm-link.

"Venceremos, this is your Matriarch speaking! Inform Archduke Bolivar that I'll be landing within the next twenty minutes and expect to see him as soon as I touch down."

The man on the small vid-screen frowned incredulously.

"Our Matriarch? Try again. Milady Elsbett just arrived this morning..."

"Not the Sabra-Jaguar matriarch. Tell Charlemagne that the Matriarch of **all **Nietzscheans is here to see him. And while you're at it: tell Elsbett, too."

The frown deepened, and for a second Beka Valentine wondered silently which programming will win: the urge to impose one's will on everyone and reject being ordered about – or the impulse to obey every sacred cow the Nietzschean pantheon could come up with. But then the dark eyes of the slightly Asian looking man dropped their stern look:

"Aye, Ma'am!"

/

Standing tall with arms crossed on his chest, the richly embroidered folders of his cape elegantly wrapping up and stressing his slender figure, Charlemagne Bolivar waited at the low end of a staircase that reached down from the tiny landing platform next to the sumptuous mansion Beka had been guided to.

"Beka Valentine! I always thought you had style! I am now to discover that you may even have class!" he exclaimed, his eyes wandering up and down her leather pilot-suit in an appreciative manner

"Charlemagne Bolivar!" Beka greeted back, her tone mimicking his own, ironic one. "One of the Commonwealth's many advantages: they keep uniform designs simple, useful... and classy." Mustering her host impertinently, she gave a quick, soft click of her tongue, winking lightly: "Well, different folks have different tastes, I suppose..."

Chuckling, Bolivar bowed deferentially, although his manner still maintained a slight air of irony about it.

"Matriarch, to what do we owe the honour of your visit to our humble corner of the universe?"

Unfazed, _Andromeda_'s captain motioned him to straighten himself up with a vague, dismissing wave of her hand. The gesture was arrogantly natural and it took the man completely by surprise, to the point of obeying right away and losing quite a good portion of haughtiness. Seeing it, Beka had almost to bite back a laugh. Instead she let her eyes wander around, taking in the vast lawns losing themselves towards groups of trees that outlined the park surrounding the huge castle/palace/residence/fortress displaying countless turrets, balconies, crenelated parapets and the like, adorned with French windows, gothic vaults, Ionic columns, African wood-work and renaissance ornaments. Beka sighed. Somehow on the road towards genetic perfection, the good taste-chromosomes must have gotten lost along the way. Divining her thoughts by the look on her face, Bolivar smiled a bit apologetically:

"The Sabra have their own, very particular ideas on what splendour and power must look like," he murmured.

"Speaking of which," Beka cut in, ignoring his meek attempt to fraternise, "I had explicitly asked for Elsbett to join you."

"I know. She's... a bit busy with something that just came up during her brief journey to Iguacu," the archduke answered vaguely. "She only just returned from there this very morning."

For a second Beka wondered why Bolivar told her that, but his next words let all musing about it leave her head.

"Besides," Charlemagne continued, "she's been not quite herself lately."

"Oh?"

"Irritated, angry, depressed..." the man elaborated. "And when she is like that, Elsbett tends to get positively dangerous."

_Dangerous_. To Beka this sounded just about as if Elsbett Mossadim, first daughter of the Sabra-pride and Matriarch of the united Sabra-Jaguar had been **exactly **like herself lately, but she refrained from any further comment.

"Anyway," Bolivar continued meanwhile," she will join us later for dinner. In the meantime, she asked me to express our both' heartfelt condolences to you."

It was Beka's turn to drop her guard. Charlemagne's words and – more than that – the sincerity shining through his voice took her by surprise. Her eyes widened, then narrowed slightly. Seeing it, the man at her side shook his head in sadness.

"I always respected him. And Elsbett and I..." The woman's head jerked to the side in a gesture involuntarily betraying unwillingness to a certain point. Where Dylan was concerned, hearing anything about Elsbett's opinions was pretty high up on the list of things she could do without. Nonetheless she composed herself and turned a blank face back towards her interlocutor.

"Well?" she asked – forcing herself to politeness of some sort, although it still sounded rather uninviting.

"In spite of everything, Elsbett and me value each other to a certain degree. As far as Nietzschean ways go, we are happy together. And we haven't forgotten that we owe it all to Dylan Hunt..."

"To a certain degree..." Beka echoed.

"To a certain degree," Bolivar repeated, then shrugged. "She won't mention it to you, but when we heard the news, Elsbett's first thoughts were of you..."

"Really?" The Commonwealth officer didn't sound convinced.

"Yes, she told me that she was very sorry for you. Thanks to Captain Hunt she now can imagine what it must feel like to lose one's mate..."

"He wasn't m..." Beka interrupted, but then broke off abruptly. "Oh, heck!" she exclaimed. "I've already told her so many times, but..." A look into Charlemagne's face prevented her from continuing. For a second they just locked eyes before the woman then dropped her gaze. "I wish it would still matter..." she murmured more to herself than to him. Her head came up again and she looked straight at him openly: "Thank you for your compassion," she finished, herself not quite believing that she was really speaking such words to a Nietzschean, more than that: to Charlemagne Bolivar of all people. But he had truly sounded as if he really meant it. "I appreciate it," she concluded simply.

He nodded in silence, then cleared his throat. The moment, odd and – a first in the few times they ever had met –carrying a trace strangely resembling something like veracity, passed.

"And now you're here about what? Revenge?" the archduke inquired, his voice again drenched in his usual, distant, slightly haughty manner.

The Commonwealth captain drew in a sharp breath.

"Not likely," she replied in a cool tone.

"No, of course not," the Nietzschean laughed, leading the way towards the vast terrace in front of the huge ground floor windows facing the park. "Because you Commonwealth guys are too decent for that..."

"If that's how you want to put it."

"How would you put it?"

Beka smiled thinly.

"I'd say that we Commonwealth guys are too fresh and not strong enough to start picking fights on pure sentimental reasons."

"What other reasons for going to war with the Dragans do you have?"

"You tell me," Rebekkah Valentine challenged her host while accepting the chair he had pulled for her at a small, shadowed table. Moving over to another chair, Charlemagne Bolivar tilted his head to one side, throwing the woman a long look. His lids dropped then, veiling his eyes in a motion that reminded Beka of a lazy, old lizard. He smiled thinly and shook his head at her.

"That's not how it works. You came to see us. So why don't you do the telling?"

"Because I am your Matriarch. And I say we do it the other way round."

The archduke laughed up.

"And you think that'll give you the edge you need on me?"

"I think that you can't really help yourselves on the matter. You grew up with my legend."

"You want to move against Paul Musseveni. We grew up with his legend, too."

A broad grin flashed up on the woman's face.

"See? Told ya' you'll tell me."

An appreciative, if a bit annoyed gleam scintillated in Bolivar's eyes. But then he clicked his tongue.

"Beka Valentine, do you really think that some old legend and the Commonwealth's fears because the Dragans have finally succeeded to bring down their... 'hero' is worth the risk of our fleet?"

"I think that if Paul Musseveni succeeds with his plans, your fleet, our fleet, all fleets won't matter any longer," Beka replied sharply. She leaned forward: "Charlemagne, listen to me! The Dragans, even weakened, are still the most formidable one of all Nietzschean prides. They conquer and rule their space with a fist of iron, they can recover more quickly than all others, they are more cruel, more brutal and they are far more ruthless than even the Sabra. And certainly more so than the Jaguar-pride. And if Musseveni gets his ideas to work, if he really comes up with a new breed of Nietzscheans who can produce flash and control its addictive downside on their own, they'll walk all over you and us and everyone else. What he attempts to do is not an improvement of the Nietzscheans, it is a whole, new race in its own right. And much as you might be all designed to believe in survival of the fittest, I somehow doubt that anyone of you will still be so fond of this theory once those fittest are _others_."

"Do you have solid proof that this new master race has come anywhere near becoming reality?"

"No, but once we have solid proof for that, it'll be too late, I suppose, to effectively do something about it," _Andromeda_'s captain warned.

"Right." The man scrutinised her carefully, his demeanour clearly indicating that he still was not completely convinced. "And you're sure Dylan Hunt has nothing to do with it?"

Leaning back in her chair, Beka Valentine eyed him widely, the look on her face as open and straight as she could muster.

"Like I said," she bit out in the end, forcing the words out through clenched teeth, "unfortunately Dylan Hunt no longer matters now."

Charlemagne Bolivar dug small, white, sharp canines into his lower lip.

"But what if..." He stopped, clearly searching for the right words, musing. Beka's eyebrows rose inquiringly, a small frown appearing between them.

"If...?" she echoed his question.

"Well, yes... What if he still matters?"

Beka shook her head.

"How could he? I won't start and fight a war over a corpse, not even his. Neither would the Commonwealth." She briefly closed her eyes, then opened them again, this time allowing the grief to shine through her gaze. "Really, it is not about Dylan. He's gone, and I learned long ago to bury my dead."

"Yes, I'm sure you have," the archduke agreed. "Trouble is though: if we follow you and go to war for your side, we will need to know that when push comes shove you are able and willing to bury the living, as well."

/

The buzz of insects sounded deafening in the silence. Across the table Beka seemed to have frozen up, her eyes wide and unblinking, all of her being as still, immobile, nearly not breathing as a marble statue. The quiet almost formed something like a glass bell covering the table and the two figures seated at it, endowing the scene for any bystander with an eerie, somehow secluded feeling to it. It was as if the world around the two people had dropped from existence.

The silence stretched itself, gaining in weight, becoming more solid, suffocating. And when it finished, its end came as a surprise, as sharp as a whiplash.

"Explain!" Beka ordered the man sternly, in a dried-up, quiet, no-nonsense-with-me-now sort of tone.

Bolivar pressed his lips together before answering, obviously searching for the right words.

"I said: talk!" the High Guard officer commanded again.

"I..." He hesitated. "I don't know how to start." It was a surprising confession from the part of someone like the archduke, but Beka had no patience to muse about it now.

"You said: bury the living," she spat out at him, her livid face gaining a bit of colour back. "Considering the context we were discussing, there is one question that comes to mind: **what **living?"

The Nietzschean swallowed.

"What living, Charlemagne?" Beka suddenly roared, jumping to her feet and leaning over the table. He didn't answer, but she saw the confirmation of her suspicion in his eyes. Still, she needed to hear it. "Is Dylan alive?"

He shrugged, out of an awkward feeling, realising too late how wrong the gesture might be interpreted. But before he could readjust it, the table between them flew to the side, its glass plate shattering into thousands of shards, and Beka was upon him, one of her arms pushing down on his chest, her hand tightly closed around his jacket, one of her knees pressing painfully into the lower regions of his body. Strangely enough, her face still showed the same unmoved stony expression as before.

"Speak!" she told him, almost gently.

He was a Nietzschean, maybe not quite as powerful as a Dragan, but still powerful enough to not be intimidated by a human female, but the swift reaction combined with the deadly coldness and deceptively calm serenity in Beka's eyes prompted even him to caution. Carefully, slowly he reached up with his hand and encircled her wrist, trying to force it away.

"I will, really, but maybe we can return to a more civilised manner first."

"We will," she replied, her voice still low, "but only after you've talked to me." And then he felt something else, more firm and more slender, joining the knee pressing into his guts. He didn't have to look to know what it was.

_Handy little weapons, those damned force-lances_, he thought, letting his hand drop back down.

"We caught a spy, a Dragan, on Iguacu Prime," he sputtered out aloud and a bit in a hurry, instead of trying to buy himself more time. "Elsbett brought him in this very morning, after our interrogators said he had news on Paul Musseveni and Captain Dylan Hunt..."

"You too must have seen the broadcast," Beka interrupted. "We had Argosy confirm it that Dylan was really shot down and killed."

"Shot down, yes. And severely injured in the process. But not killed."

"Talk faster!" The gun pressed harder into Bolivar's tender parts.

"From what the man said, they showed him just for seconds, then put him into stasis. He was dying – and they wanted enough of him alive for their tests."

Beka's eyes narrowed.

"Are you telling me that they... they've deep-frozen Dylan to... experiment on him?"

Charlemagne Bolivar wearily closed his eyes: trust Beka Valentine to express things maybe not quite accurately but with remarkable plasticity, no matter what the subject!

"Something like that, but not quite..."

"Spare me the scientific finesse and elaborate terminology!" she retorted, dressing herself up and letting go of him. "Where are they holding Dylan?"

"Not on Myrmidon," Charlemagne told her.

"Where? is he still alive? What are the Dragans planning?"

"That's what Elsbett's trying to find out at the moment."

"Right." Beka crossed her arms on her chest, her face closing up, but then she straightened herself up, squaring her shoulders. "Show me your prisoner!" she then demanded.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I was there on Myrmidon and on Ral Parthia." Pleased with herself, she saw Bolivar's eyes widen in surprise. "That's right: between the two of us, your prisoner and I could come up with quite useful conclusions." She turned around. "Which way, Charlemagne?"

"Wait!"

"What else?"

"The thing you came here about in the first place: us joining the Commonwealth fleet against the Dragans. Is it still on?"

"What do you think? Of course! Until I know exactly what that man has to say, nothing's changed – but the fact that I was probably more right than even I thought. They might be a lot farther with their master-race than all of us liked to believe." Beka sighed. "Yes, we need you, Archduke. And you need us. And I need..." She stopped briefly. "I need to find out everything I can on what happened to Dylan," she then concluded simply, not trying to conceal any implications her words carried along.

Noticing, Charlemagne Bolivar nodded in appreciation – and respect. She had been right to some extent: no matter how much of a politician, a leader and an Alpha he was – he HAD grown up with her legend. And to see that legend offering a glimpse of her true self to him... It was rather overwhelming, it was as if some Terran from old times would have seen Joan of Arc or Isis explaining themselves to him. And although he suspected that she had taken this effect into the equation, he still couldn't quite withstand the mind-blowing impression that it left on him.


	59. Chapter 58

Thanks a lot, squid109.

**Chapter 58**

She had to admit it, Telemachus Rhade was good. More than that, he was positively stellar. Back in orbit around Terrazed, Beka received information that – except for some very solid back-up strategically dispersed throughout Commonwealth space – the fleet had already set out for Illion. And despite all her doubts regarding the effectiveness of their attempt to blockade the Dragans, doubts that had surged up upon seeing how large a number of vessels the former triumvir had left in place to defend the home-worlds from any unwelcome surprises: he seemed to make good use of his thinly displayed forces.

She was still four jumps away from Illion when she was hailed by a Commonwealth cruiser and asked to identify herself. Thinking they might have gotten lucky, she tried another route, but found herself – albeit this time only two jumps from the Dragan system – stopped and hailed anew. Two more different approaches later, one of them in which she had actively tried to escape the scrutiny only to find herself effectively kept at bay and away from the slipstream portal she had managed to open, she was convinced that Rhade was really up to his task.

Her enthusiasm was dashed when upon finally making it through to the outskirts of the Illion-system, she noticed that the _Andromeda _herself as well as four more Commonwealth vessels surveying other sectors were under fire from slip-fighters attacking not in squadrons, but alone against the enormous war-ships. It would have looked ridiculous, had there not been enough tiny, but frequent explosions here and there proving that the Dragans hit their targets, withdrawing… no, _disappearing _almost faster than they had come up. It looked like a constant bee-swarm flying up and stinging one by one. Nothing of it seemed really to do major damage – but enough bee-stings accumulated in time could kill a bear…

/

"_Andromeda Ascendant_, this is your captain speaking. Requesting permission to dock."

"Beka, welcome home! I'm glad to see you back. There are four fighters coming up to escort you in."

"There is no need, Rommie. I already saw the Dragans. I'm on my guard."

Her vid-screen lit up, showing her XO's dark, concerned features.

"Beka, please be careful," he cautioned.

"I am, don't worry, Rhade. How are we holding up?"

"Better than you think. Those damned attacks occur only about twice a day, when they have ships trying to break out or in."

"Do they succeed?"

"A bit. We're trying to keep them at bay."

"Do **we **succeed?"

"A bit," Rhade answered again with a weary smile.

"I see," Beka said dryly. "Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose?"

"Yeah, and sometimes it rains… Dammit, boss, could we just think about all these deep, philosophical insights after you're back aboard?"

"Seamus! Hey! Nice to see you, too… Stop fretting. And tell Trance to prep med-deck and to send me some bots and a gurney."

"What? Why? What happened? Are you all right?"

"Yes, I am. It's not me, but I brought someone along… Stay put. I'll see you in a couple of minutes. Beka out."

/

By the time Rhade and Harper reached Beka's landing bay, she was already standing right next to the doors to _Andromeda_'s corridors, in company of her ship's holographic image, observing with furrowed brows two Marias which were carefully unloading a strange heap from the fighter.

"…tacks are sporadic, only occurring less than twice a day, but each time they manage to keep us occupied and distract us enough to have some ships slip through," both men heard _Andromeda _briefing her captain.

"I see you're already being brought up-to-date," the commander cut in.

"Yes," the woman nodded. "You've been doing a good job."

"Far from perfect," the ever critical Nietzschean sighed.

"Nothing's ever perfect," Beka remarked sympathetically.

"Yes, ain't that the truth!" agreed Harper. "Speaking of which: what in the name of the Vedran Empress is that?"

Harper's question drew their attention to him. His irrepressible curiosity had prompted him to stride past the doors and approach the fighter, taking a good look at the Marias and the indistinguishable load they were just placing carefully on the anti-grav gurney. He sounded horrified.

"That is a Dragan," Beka informed him, "courtesy of Elsbett and Charlemagne Bolivar."

"What happened to him?" asked Rhade, with a slightly disgusted, appalled look at the bloody mess that was meanwhile about to be led away.

Touching her neck, his captain raised a finger, signaling him to wait:

"Trance," she said aloud, "I have a patient coming for you. Are you already on med-deck?"

"Yes, I am," the girl's voice answered her. "Who is it? What happened to him?" she asked, echoeing Rhade's question.

"Elsbett happened to him. He is a Dragan spy they caught on Iguacu Prime. Apparently they're trying to infiltrate other prides, especially the Sabra-Jaguar," Beka explained "Trance, listen, I'll be on my way to you as soon as possible. Please, patch him up as good as you can. He's in really bad shape, but he **must **survive."

"Will do, Beka. Trance out."

"So," the captain turned around to her officers, motioning them along to accompany her. "How are things here? Details, please."

Rhade nodded and began to brief her on the situation, with Harper throwing in his bits about how the _Andromeda _and the other ships were coping with the attacks.

"And there was an uproar," the Nietzschean finally said. "We did broadcast the news that Senate and triumvirate had passed a resolution on setting up tighter control throughout Commonwealth space and along the areas that seemed sensitive to 'illegal attacks' as soon as you left. After that I moved as much of the fleet out as I could..."

"I noticed," Beka acquiesced.

"Of course there was an outraged cry about abusive dominance coming from the Dragans, the Ogami..."

"The usual suspects," Harper cut matters short. "Luckily the FTA is backing us on this one, however."

"Exactly," Rhade confirmed. "Especially since we gave everyone assurance that we would keep well out of all territorial space," he added maliciously.

Beka smiled thinly at that. All territorial space ended as soon as one was far away from a system to open a slip-portal. Keeping well out of it meant nothing less than that the CW was assuming the right to control the slip-routes.

"There's only one problem..." the commander considered aloud.

"We don't have the means we need to back up our attitude?" his captain inserted.

Harper frowned. "That's putting it nicely" he said. "We're spread out awfully thin. Stretched like a wedding tux taken out to wear again on a golden anniversary, so to speak".

Beka couldn't help smiling at the analogy. They had reached Command and she strode up to her station, calling up the data Rhade and Harper had mentioned. Indeed, there were only five DSA ships, the _Andromeda Ascendant_ and a handful of smaller ships, all LOS and below, meant to provide some sort of buffering for the larger vessels. Effective enough in principle, they could however not completely seal off the entire system, especially not if a multitude of freighters supported by slip-fighter charges were trying to break through in different places at once. And while they managed to cut off the Dragans from going about their business as usual, preventing them from pursuing many courses of action they probably would have been engaged in otherwise, the blockade did by no means come even close to drying them out: not on supplies, not on weapons and – as Beka knew – not even on attempts at spreading their influence.

Not many Nietzschean ships came through, but the ones that made it were enough to make it apparent that a serious attempt to besiege Illion would turn into a long, tedious affair. Additionally, there was always the threat that the Dragans might launch a concerted, massive counter-attack. Two jumps away there were Siege Perilous class-vessels, Glorious Heritage ships and even Lancers' platforms, but as of now both Beka and the Commonwealth' political branches thought it better to maintain the facade of a 'security and control'-mission.

The Dragans knew better of course. With Illion under surveillance and Crimeea controlled as severely as possible by Doyle and the remnants of Fremont's fleet, there was no way how they could not have known exactly what the presence of the CW ships at their borders meant. They did not seem ready to share this knowledge, though, with any potential allies.

This realization both reassured and frightened Beka. It meant that the Dragans had not reached the point where they felt they could conduct a successful attack against the Commonwealth. It also meant, however, that what they planned was the complete annihilation of the new founded union as well as a far more complete domination of what they were about to conquer than ever before, since their so far very cautious attempts to obtain allies could only mean one thing: when all was said and done, they expected themselves to come out strong enough to overpower not only their former foes but their co-belligerents, as well.

Beka sighed. Looked at from this perspective Elsbett's methods seemed understandable.

_He let her wait for a couple of minutes in an empty hallway in the cellar, then came to escort her further, seeming somewhat displeased. The sight that greeted her was gruesome. In the tiny cell Bolivar had led her to was a rather tall, bulky man hanging by his wrists from a chain that dangled down from the ceiling and was too short to allow his feet to touch the ground. Nothing else about him was distinguishable. From his dark sweat plastered hair, all the way down to the naked feet everything about him was a blood covered mess. Beka had seen pain inflicted on others and even on herself, but what she saw here surpassed anything she had seen or experienced before. She couldn't even imagine what might have caused such carnage until Charlemagne picked up a small device lying on a small table close to the door and held it out for her to examine:_

"A mono-molecular lash," he explained. "Elsbett's favourite."

Beka felt her eyes growing wide.

"Elsbett? Elsbett did THIS?"

Bolivar shrugged.

"I guess, she got a little carried away."

"No kidding," the woman replied dryly. "Where is she?"

"Cooling off somewhere, I suppose. He didn't talk. My darling wife does not take kindly to... rejection."

"He didn't talk? But I thought you said..."

"The information we obtained came from one of my uncles. Several dignitaries and even a few members from both the Mossadim- and the Bolivar-clans have been approached by Dragans. They're looking to overthrow us..."

"Us as in you and Elsbett?"

"Exactly – us. And they plan to forge an alliance with others from our family. Fleet-admiral Cuatemoc of the Drago-Khatzov, who happens to be married to one of my sisters, apparently thinks the time has come to strike against you – and a lot of others. He sees the fact that I entered an alliance with you in the first place and... reconsidered my position with the united Nietzschean fleet at the battle of Terrazed as a liability. And that the time has come to do something about it."

"Cuatemoc, eh?" Beka echoed pensively. "Well, he waited a long time to strike, but I suppose that now he thinks that they have enough assets to no longer risk be defeated by... slipstream."

There was an appreciative gleam in Bolivar's eyes.

"Precisely. Fortunately some of his intel was faulty: he approached one member of my family who happens to be loyal. When he got notice that the capture of Dylan Hunt enabled a huge leap forward and that the Dragans are now on the verge of a break-through and therefore moving to strike, he came to us. We captured the one meant to recruit him... Elsbett brought him here and tried to find out about all others from our clans who have been contacted. He didn't talk..."

"She didn't try to find out exactly how far the Dragans have come and... what exactly has happened to Dylan?"

"Forgive me, Matriarch, but information on who is in on a conspiracy against my house is more vital to us right now than details on the Dragans and on how exactly your captain has been helpful in promoting their plans. However, as I said, he didn't talk at all."

A soft moan escaping from the tortured figure made Beka avert her eyes from Bolivar.

"Forgive **me**, Archduke, but I believe that the first condition of making someone talk is to keep him in a state of health where he is still able to do so."

Bolivar shrugged indifferently. "True. But I already admitted that Elsbett might have overreacted."

Opening the door, Bolivar motioned two of the guards outside the cell to come in and take the man down. As the battered figure was let down, Bolivar pointed a small scanner at him. His disgusted expression giving way to a slightly regretful one.

"It seems," he said, "nothing can be done about it anymore. He's dying."

Beka felt her heart grow heavy. There still might be a way to get information from the captured spy.

"But surely your doctors..."

"I am not going to make his presence here public. If I let him be treated, eventually news will get out about the Dragans' plans. That might spur on some others not quite as devoted to us as my uncle. And as he didn't talk the first time around, I don't see much point in patching him up and submit him again to the entire procedure."

Listening to him, Beka felt coldness spreading within her. She scrutinized Charlemagne's face, trying to determine if this was his way of getting back at her for having cornered him earlier-on, but his eyes met hers in a completely dispassionate way. No, he had no interests beyond what he had told her, not in this matter, at least. Biting her lip, she looked at the prisoner, the first and only chance she'd been presented with since the whole nightmare had started to get somewhat closer to what had happened to Dylan. A chance that was now slipping from her, taken away by Nietzschean ruthlessness just as Dylan had been taken – and with him almost everything she had come to think herself to be.

"Give him to me," she heard a hollow voice saying, before she realized that it was her own, before she realized that she even wanted to say something at all.

"What?"

"Give him to me." She clamped her mouth shut, biting down on her teeth. It had sounded... begging.

"No," Bolivar replied.

Beka swallowed the rage that began to well at Bolivar's refusal

"You said before..."

"I know what I said. It was true, I AM sorry about what happened. So is Elsbett. But I'm not sorry enough to risk myself and mine for it."

"You won't. And I'll find out the names you want to know."

"How? If Elsbett didn't manage..."

"That's my worry. I'll find out. I promise."

He looked at her closely. His eyes were weighing her, testing, boring into her own as if he wanted to bare her innermost. _She felt the urge to mask herself, to run away from those eyes, but then she seemed to come to a resolve. And dropped her shields completely. __They kept measuring each other up for some more seconds, that seemed to drag on like hours for Beka. And then, when she already thought that all was lost, she heard Bolivar sigh._

"Very well," he said. "I remember how you and your captain played Chuchulian the first time around. I remember well our last encounter, Captain. And my wife told me what you did at Kulich. You had the fate of me and mine at least twice in your hands. And you helped keeping us safe. I'll trust you to do it again. Don't make me regret this."

Beka nodded her understanding, then fearing he might reconsider, gestured towards the two guards and then at the unconscious Dragan: "Have them bring him to my ship, Archduke," she told Bolivar. "And on the way there, let me tell you when and where I want your fleet to show up."  


"Captain, I'm detecting multiple slipstream-events." _Andromeda_'s cool voice brought Beka back to the here and now and gave both Rhade and Harper a startle.

"What? Who is it?" the Nietzschean barked, almost storming the weapons' console.

"Stand down," Beka ordered him. "_Andromeda_, I take it, it's our allies: the Sabra-Jaguar."

"They certainly are Nietzscheans," the ship informed them. Both men turned inquiring looks at her.

"Are you sure about this?" Rhade asked in a still voice. She shrugged.

"As sure as..." Her voice trailed off as she bit back the rest of her sentence. Hell, how she had always mocked Dylan's incessant attempts to try and find some Nietzscheans to trust, time and again vowing that she'd never make that mistake. Yet here she was herself, trusting the Sabra-Jaguar would stay true to Bolivar's words. Hoping it wouldn't be a mistake. Knowing that, if this all had to have a point, she had to make the first step, had to start trusting some of them somewhere. And suddenly realizing that there was one Nietzschean she'd trusted all along, one who had proved himself worthy of her trust – of their all trust – time and time again.

"I am sure," she said simply, looking at Rhade. "_Andromeda_, open a channel."

"Aye, Captain: Channel open:"

"Incoming fleet, this is Captain Rebekkah Valentine of the _Andromeda Ascendant_. Identify yourselves."

On the monitor the universe gave way to Elsbett Mossadim Bolivar's aloof face.

"Hello there, Captain. I think we have a date."


	60. Chapter 59

A/N: I am terribly sorry for having been so unreliable with Gambit; I'll try to not let it happen again, but life is a bit turbulent right now. Beware the following chapter: it's not beta-ed, I had the feeling some of you would rather put up with my mistakes than wait for a bit longer...

**Chapter 59**

"Your Highness, glad to have you aboard."

"Thank you, Matriarch. The pleasure is all ours. Thank you for having asked us to participate in this... _glorious _endeavour of yours."

Standing at the doors of the hangar-deck where Beka Valentine had come to greet their guest, Commander Telemachus Rhade couldn't suppress a slight shudder at the exchange he was quietly observing.

The women – both tall and slender, one dark, the other fair – measured each other haughtily, the steely, ice-blue gaze of the one as well as the dark, veiled stare of the other belying the pleasantries. As did the soft, insincere voices.

Captain Rebekkah Valentine had loathed Elsbett Mossadim, First Daughter of the Sabra, from the first moment she had set her eyes on her more than six years ago, when the _Andromeda _had been assigned to escort the Nietzschean thoroughbred to her wedding with Archduke Charlemagne Bolivar of the Jaguar-pride. The feeling had been mutual. The pretty bumpy start had been followed by an even bumpier relationship, especially after it had turned out that their both' taste in men covered more or less the same grounds, only to get downright nasty when Dylan Hunt had placed the fate of the Sabra-Jaguar fleet solely into Beka's hands – and it hit rock bottom as soon as Beka had flawlessly delivered the rescue he had been expecting from her. Yes,_ Andromeda_'s XO had saved the mighty Nietzschean pride, but by doing so she had humiliated Elsbett in the most subtle, most vicious way one could think of: without leaving the arch-duchess with any possibility for a future payback. That was not something a Mossadim knew how to take graciously.

From then on, with both Charlemagne Bolivar and Dylan Hunt painfully aware of the current state of affairs between the two women, their encounters had been keptbrief, few and far between. Not that the archduke had many objections to cat-fights over – among other things – his person; but there was also Dylan to take into account who, unlike Bolivar, felt more embarrassed rather than flattered over this sort of thing, especially when he suspected it to be – among others – also about him to some degree. And then things had changed - for the worse, from Elsbett's perspective. Beka Valentine had emerged from the war against the Abyss and the Magog not only victorious, but also miraculously transformed into a figure of power for all Nietzscheans to venerate. And then Dylan Hunt had left the game, and the place he had left vacant had also found no worthier occupant than the former smuggling pirate-captain turned pillar of the Commonwealth and Mother of all Nietzscheans. Elsbett Mossadim, as her husband had determinedly told her, was left with no choice: as soon as Beka's request for support was out in the open, she had to comply. Something that didn't sit with her any better than it did with _Andromeda_'s new captain.

From Telemachus Rhade's perspective the auspices for the two women to co-operate looked not exactly grand. Things promised to develop... interestingly.

* * *

"To be perfectly clear, Captain Valentine, you may have convinced Charlemagne, but then again... him and you seem to follow similar patterns of thought, a trait that I don't quite share with the two of you. In my opinion, there are ways more effective and economic to deal with the Dragans being on the rise again than a full blown war."

"This isn't about the Dragans, Arch-Duchess," Beka contradicted.

They were standing at the doors to the briefing room, ready to go in, when the Nietzschean obviously decided that, before entering the conference attended by both the entire senior staff of the _Andromeda _and the Sabra-Jaguar officers she had brought along, a little heart-to-heart with the Commonwealth-captain might come in handy. In a rush, she had made her point by telling Beka that the speculations Bolivar had been presented with had failed to impress his wife in a similar manner – as did Beka's new-found status as Matriarch of all Nietzscheans; Elsbett Mossadim had never been much into tradition that didn't directly benefit herself. Ancestral values, Nietzsche, Drago Musseveni: that was all very nice and she didn't mind it, but when it threatened to intervene with her and her family's survival the Sabra-Jaguar arch-duchess had no trouble deciding swiftly where her priorities lay.

Arms crossed on her chest, her demeanour almost too calm, Beka Valentine had silently listened to all of her objections, that for the largest part she could well understand: indeed, they didn't have proof that Paul Musseveni and Technocorps had by now succeeded with their plans, nor did they know how far those plans actually went. The attack on Fremont's fleet set aside, that had followed right after the opening of the portal/tunnel/wormhole Beka had identified as opening to Ral Parthia, there had been no sign of any Dragans displaying the formidable attributes the kludge seemed to fear. And although both the Commonwealth and the Sabra-Jaguar had gained information on the Drago-Khatzov upgrading their military and armament on all levels as well as on several infiltration operations that seemed to have been initiated by Illion, none of the alleged spies caught had been talkative enough to provide waterproof intel on what they were having in mind. Nor had there been open provocation, an expansionist move of sorts or any material threat that could be traced to the Dragans – other than what had happened to Beka and Dylan. And that, Beka had to admit, might very well have been personal. Less than one year and a half after they had all gone through the battle with the Abyss and the Magog, Beka could understand why everyone was still licking wounds, building strength back – and not interested in entering yet another massive, open conflict.

Still: she was right. She knew it in her bones – and no, it wasn't personal. Well, at least not only. But she could see nonetheless exactly where Elsbett's problems to follow her arose.

"Of course it has nothing to do with the Dragans. It's about Dylan..."

"No, it's not. Elsbett. I know you don't believe that, I know you want solid proof, I know I can't provide it. And yet, all of this goes far beyond you, me, the Commonwealth, the Nietzscheans or any other race that populates the Known Worlds. What Paul Musseveni plans goes farther than that. And if we don't stop him now, it'll grow up to swallow all of us – even the Dragans."

"If you hope to get the prisoner Charlemagne foolishly surrendered to you to give you more information on that: I wouldn't hang my hopes too high."

"I... I need him for other purposes. But yes, I also want to see if I can't get him to talk about the conspiracy they planned on Venceremos – and about whatever Musseveni holds in store," Beka conceded.

"He won't give you anything."

"He already has."

Surprised, Elsbett Bolivar swirled on her heels and stared in astonishment at the young girl who had appeared behind her as if out of no-where. Beka briefly smiled: it would have amused her even more, had Trance's words not forced her attention away from all musings on the Nietzschean's state of mind.

"Trance?" she summoned her, inwardly cursing herself for the fact that she couldn't suppress a pleading hint of hope from creeping into her voice.

"Beka, can we talk for a second?" the young woman asked, shifting uncomfortably under the tall Sabra-Jaguar's cold, inquiring gaze.

"Is this the friendly monkey, formerly known as purple? The tail's gone..."

"This is Trance Gemini, our chief medical officer and... much more than you could ever imagine. If I were you, I'd keep a low profile, Arch-Duchess. The tail may be gone, but it is still sorely missed – and all ill-treatment that befell it duly remembered. Now, if you'll excuse me and already proceed to the briefing-room... I'll be with you in a minute..."

"In fact, Beka, it might take a little longer than that. Would you... Could you come to Medical with me? There's something I need to show you."

_Andromeda_'s captain threw the golden alien a long, weighing look. But Trance's face and the deep-dark eyes didn't betray anything more that would have enlightened her words further. Pressing her lips together, the blonde nodded crisply and opened the doors, revealing the vast briefing room with the long table, that – with both the senior officers of the _Andromeda _and the Sabra-Jaguars seemed overcrowded for a change. With a small, inviting gesture, she motioned Elsbett Bolivar into the room:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be with you as soon as possible. In the meanwhile: _Andromeda_, please see to it that some refreshments are provided. Harper, take Command, I'll call you when we're ready to proceed. Rhade: take care of our guests. I'll try to be quick."

The doors fell shut again, before anyone could reply. Briskly, Beka turned away and headed towrads med-deck.

"Okay, Trance, tell me now. I presume the Dragan will survive?"

"Oh yes, he will, indeed. But... no thanks to me..."

"What do you mean? I'm sure you did your best..."

"I did," the young girl interrupted. "Still: his injuries were well beyond anything I could have treated successfully."

"But, if he survived and talked..."

"He didn't talk. As to the surviving... Like I said: not because of me."

"You said though that he's provided information."

"He has. Beka... I'd rather show you."

* * *

"You see? You see?"

Trance's tone seemed to be bouncing back and forth between excitement and perturbation – with a slight note of fear. Hearing it, Beka felt not little disconcerted. There wasn't much in the universe able to perturb Trance, much less frighten her. With a frown between her brows, she tried to focus anew on the huge panel divided into tiny portions displaying... chaos.

"I... see millions of DNA-sequences... I... Trance, what's going on? You were supposed to treat the Dragan and figure out a way to make him talk. Instead you seem to have gone into... Trance, what is all this?"

"Not millions, but... well yes, thousands of DNA-sequences of practically everyone who ever set foot on the _Andromeda_... Everyone but you, that is..." the young girl tried to explain.

"Why?"

"Well, because you're the captain, of course. Your medical files are classified unless needed in a case of emergency. Otherwise even I need clearance to access them..."

"No, I mean: why are you looking at those sequences?"

"Well, I discovered something... You see, I was looking for an effective method to get your prisoner to talk. Torture obviously doesn't work with him, opiates, barbiturates and stuff like scopolamin or natrium-triopenthal don't really affect Nietzscheans as they do humans or Perseids and..."

"Trance, get to the point..."

"I thought that my best chances were to try something on the sub-cellular level, something bypassing their nano-defences. I began to check out his DNA. And... Beka, he is amazing!"

"Define amazing."

"Well, strands of his DNA have configurations I haven't seen before but in very... really very, very few people. And..."

"And?" It was obvious that _Andromeda_'s captain was growing more and more restless. "Trance, for the love of God, spill it out!"

Not replying, the younger woman magnified three of the diagrams, cocking her head towards them with a meaningful nod.

"What do you see?" she queried.

"Genetics have never been my forte..."

"I know, but... Look! What do you see?"

"Three different DNA-sequences..."

"I don't mean the differences."

The whole thing began to feel like a school-test to Beka. One at which she was failing – and didn't have the time for.

"Trance, I have a war on my hands I need to get back to. So tell me: what do you mean? The similarities?" she asked annoyed.

"Bingo."

"What?" Beka's eyes narrowed. Puzzled, she scrutinised the screen more sharply, then drew in a deep breath. Indeed, there were several similarities to be detected between the three helixes, like an additional base, varying in frequency but still obviously present in a way usual polymers didn't show, and also like considerably fewer hydrogen bonds to stabilise the chains.

"In the middle – that's the Dragan's DNA, right? Whose are the others?"

"It's Rafe's on the right," Trance answered.

"Rafe?" The surprise was evident in Beka's voice. "And on the left?" She went closer to the monitor. And then, even before Trance had managed to answer, she gasped and turned around, throwing the golden girl an utterly incredulous look. "Dylan's? Trance, is that Dylan's DNA? But how... Why? What can a Dragan, Rafe and Dylan possibly have in common? By the Divine, Trance, what am I looking at?"

Pressing her lips together, Trance stared at her straightforward. Beka could almost feel all colour draining from her face.

"But... Rafe?" she murmured anew, even less composed. Then shook her head. "No," she said, sternly, "no. NO!"

"Yes, I'm afraid," Trance contradicted. "They're trying to breed Paradine."

* * *

She was seated on some sort of stool next to the bio-bed the Dragan was stretched out upon, staring blindly ahead at the screens, but didn't seem to see anything. Concerned, Trance was gently shaking her shoulder.

"Beka? Beka, please..."

Lightly shaking her head, wetting her lips and blinking in a manner that could only have been described as errant, Beka finally snapped out of it and focused on the avatar's face.

"The last time I saw something like this, I was on the _Maru _with Musseveni, discussing the effects his flash-bots had on Dylan. He... he didn't know anything about Paradine then, Trance."

"I don't think they want to... create Paradine, explicitly. But I think Musseveni clearly aims for something like that."

"And something like that would be what, exactly?" Beka exploded. "Trance, I don't get it. What he wants is a race of pilots... breathing slipstream, anticipating every twist and turn as if it were part of themselves, a race of warriors stronger, faster, more enduring, a race of..."

"Precisely," Trance confirmed.

"Precisely?" Beka jumped to her feet. "Well then: what's that got to do with Paradine in general? Or Dylan in particular? And what, in the name of the Vedran Empress, does it have to do with Rafe? I mean: Rafe???? Of all people?"

Trance sighed.

"Okay," she muttered barely audibly. "Okay." She took a deep breath, then straightened up and took Beka by the arm, walking her over to a nearby table with two more comfortable chairs and sat her down in one of them, while she let herself fall on the other one.

"Right... You said you want me to help. Fine, I will help you. I don't know if you're ready to hear what I have to say, I don't know if you want to hear it, but... I promised to help. I guess sometimes you should be careful what you wish for." She drew in a deep breath. "Beka, what do you know about Paradine?"


	61. Chapter 60

A/N: Hi, everybody. Thanks for the reviews and the feedback, etc. And the patience, of course. I'm sorry if sometimes the waiting gets a bit long (this time, however, it wasn't me, but some 'technical glitch' that didn't let me log in)... Otoh, the next chapter is a really, really long one.

A/N 2: Squid, a million thanks for the work and time (and sometimes rising blood-pressure, I suspect) you invest in this. I hate to think about what Gambit would look like without having you along for the ride :-).

**Chapter 60**

Beka drew a deep breath as she tried to gather her thoughts, to formulate at least a couple of coherent phrases about who and what Paradine were, or what she thought them to be. "I... I... don't know... I... I suppose that I know about them from the few bits and pieces that Dylan told me..."

"Ah..." Trance replied to that. It sounded dry. And angry. Beka frowned.

"What 'ah'? What is there to 'ah' about? Look, Trance, what I know is basically just that they are some sort of mythical race even older than the Vedrans, who can, through some sort of miraculous mumbo-jumbo, navigate time and space..."

"They're not older than the Vedrans," corrected Trance. "That's just a myth created around them to keep them clouded in secret..."

"I see," Beka remarked. "That's helpful." It sounded just as dry as Trance's previous remarks.

"I... I'm sorry, Beka. I'll try to be as clear as possible, but it's difficult. And I still get mad when I think about Dylan's attitude... When you said you know what he knew..."

"Hang on a second. What attitude?"

Trance gave a sigh of exasperation and began to speak. Beka thought she could detect a note of anger in the other woman's voice as she began to explain. "On Seefra, I understood. He was confused and angry – we all were. He only had a little time with Flavin, and after the old man was gone, there was no-one around to ask: nobody knew, and I couldn't remember. Later-on, when I had gotten my memories back, we had to save the system, we had to get back, fight the Abyss and the Magog... There was no time for questions. But then, then there **was **time. There was plenty of time for Dylan to ask, to find out, to get used to it, but... he didn't do it. It was then that I realized that all the earlier trouble and effort had come in handy for him: whatever Paradine meant – he didn't **want **to know."

Leaning back in her chair, Beka crossed her fingers in her lap, pensively staring down at them.

_"I used to be Dylan Hunt, captain of the High Guard flag ship _Andromeda Ascendant_, a Commonwealth officer with family, friends and prospects for the future. And that was really __**all**__ I ever wanted to be."_

It was true. She remembered, once they'd finally managed to shove aside the bitterness on Seefra and had begun to talk again to each other, the outrage, the fury that she had discovered in Dylan about what he perceived as yet another burden he hadn't asked for and didn't deserve. It had struck her enormous, something she had never seen in him before. She remembered how she had tried to soothe him. And how he had refused her attempts.

"_Dylan, you've found your home and your true heritage. Maybe you are less High Guard, but you're more Paradine."_

_"You just don't get it, do you? Beka, I don't know squat about Paradine."_

Trance was right. And Dylan was right, too. He didn't know. Because he hadn't wanted to know; somehow – of that Beka was quite sure – secretly, and very uncharacteristically for Dylan, he had hoped that the whole Paradine-issue would just go away if he only ignored it enough. But that wasn't how things worked...

"Yes," said Trance, recognizing the expressions chasing one another over the captain's face for what they were: realization. "Yes, he was the last of the Paradine, but he preferred to push everything away, afraid of what he'd find out in the end."

"And was he right to be afraid?" Beka challenged, in a vague attempt to defend her absent friend.

The girl shrugged."Yes and no."

"Crystal-clear as always."

Trance winced a bit at Beka's tone and the memory of the time Dylan had used a similar phrase."You want it straight?" she snapped. "Fine, I'll give you straight. Paradine, Beka, are no mythical creatures, no race of gods. They were just a highly interesting Vedran experiment that for once went right, created in order to contain another experiment gone also right, but that held a very probable danger of going very badly..."

"I... can't say that makes things any clearer. A Vedran experiment? Trance, I thought that Paradine were evolved Vedrans; that they were... born, not made..."

"Not quite. They were born **and **raised to be Paradine. Do you remember the Vedran training chambers?"

"For... for the protectors of... of avatars?"

"Exactly. They were made to determine if Paradine could be created from those who were born without the proper genes... They couldn't. And since they didn't really need that many Paradine..."

"Need? Need for what, Trance?"

"For us."

Understanding began to gleam in Beka's eyes. She frowned, her lids closing to slits. "You mean the Lambent Kith?" she asked.

"Exactly."

"I... don't get it..."

"Beka, do you remember that... theory that Harper and Dylan were so fond of, about how every celestial body has an avatar?"

"Well?"

"Well, they were wrong..."

"No kidding," the blonde retorted sharply. "Of course they were wrong!"

"You knew?" There was astonishment in the younger woman's voice.

"Trance, after coming across guys like Flux... After listening to stories about that chap who wrecked the Inari-system just to amuse himself... After meeting all those really, really scary characters like Azazael, Maura or Marida, I have a hard time imagining what and who you people really are, but... I much prefer to think that not EVERY celestial body has come up with one of you running around the galaxies. No offense..."

"None taken. By the way: you're right. Everything... Really EVERYTHING has a beginning, a development and an end. Sentient beings, planets, solar systems, the universe itself... However, everything also dreams of... eternity, immortality – whatever you want to call it. We do it, the humans, the Nietzscheans... the Vedrans."

"Ah, those guys again..."

"Yes, them. They really were very clever. One might argue that they were too clever for their own good. A long, long time ago, before the Commonwealth, at a time when even the Empire was young, they decided to not accept death itself. It started at Hephaistos..."

"Of course it did. Everything starts at Hephaistos," Beka interrupted bitterly.

Trance smiled but there was no humor in the expression."Yes, it does seem that way," she agreed. "It once was a densely populated solar system... Vedran. Its star eventually collapsed – creating an unimaginable catastrophe. From then on, the Vedrans began to work on a... contingency plan to prevent such things from ever happening again. And they succeeded: the stars of the 51.893 initial solar systems of the Vedran Empire were all endowed with cores similar to those of the Methus-suns – and avatars to maintain them."

"What about your moon – Ione?"

"He is Tarn-Vedra's moon; it was... he was an exception."

"For your sake?"

"In a way..."

"So him, you, all the others in the Nebula..."

"Yes. High-tech machines. Incredibly sophisticated, powerful, sentient machines to take care of other sophisticated, non-sentient machines, but – all of us – machines."

"Is this why Rommie was never really able to say what you were – or even where?"

Trance nodded, a bit awkwardly, almost as if somewhat embarrassed.

"Well..." Beka sighed, "I must say I didn't see that coming. But who helped you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Trance, even the most awesome, most amazing creations eventually need attendance, maintenance, control."

"That's what I was coming to. You see, every one of us had a...They called them 'protectors', but in fact they were, of course, our controllers. Organics, each one of them specifically attuned to a certain one of us, with the ability to reach and summon us whenever, wherever they felt like it. We were bound to them, forever tied together by a certain genetic code. The tesseracting... it needs those DNA-strands made less stable through fewer hydrogen bonds. Both Vedrans and humans are the only races who can survive with less stable helixes, created through a cross-breeding between the two of them. Ironically, humans managed better than Vedrans; so they inserted their genes into the humans instead of doing it the other way around. What you see up there, inactive in Rafe, dormant in Dylan and active in the Dragan... It's the controller-gene, Beka, that's all Paradine is about. It can exist in both Vedrans and humans from all Vedran colonies, but it only becomes active in human males, although it is passed down only through the females of both species."

"And Rafe has it? How did you find out?"

"I... wasn't looking for Rafe. I wanted to find out about you, but... as I said: since becoming captain, your files are classified..."

"Trance, I know for sure that I'm not Vedran."

"Do you? What about Avneri? What about all those legends and children songs no one in the Three Galaxies still knows? No-one, except you and Dylan, that is. Who told you about it? Where? And when? What about your... special bond with slipstream? The incident in the Vedran chambers: did it never struck you odd that Rhade **was **losing his mind in there, but you... weren't?"

Beka didn't respond immediately, seeming to lose herself in her memories, but then shook her head. "I... I don't know... I... I always thought the stories were told by my father, but..." She paused for a bit, trying to remember. "I don't know. I can't really remember much from my early childhood."

"You mean: from before your mother left..." Trance specified.

Wide-eyed, the woman stared at her, the expression on her face clearly betraying reluctance to think along the lines Trance was pointing to.

"Hang on a second, Trance: I can't tesseract. And I am terrific in slipstream. Now Dylan, he can't tesseract either, **but **he's not nearly as good as I am at streaming."

"Like I said: born **and **raised. Beka, slipstream, tesseracting – these are just ways to navigate dimensions. Your ability, the ability of all organics to master certain environmental conditions depends on genetics AND training. You were born in slipstream and trained to it from before you could walk properly. Dylan wasn't. He is a good pilot, but he never had your head-start on it. I... I've never met someone else who has it..."

"Neither have I. Not even Rafe... And the tesseracting?"

"All information regarding organics' abilities to master either slipstream or tesseracting is encoded in a closely related manner – one form is just a preliminary evolutionary stage of the other. A lot of children were born with the required genes, millions of them, really. But only 51.893 Paradine were needed. The girls were left alone, some of the boys were brought to training – to activate the encoding binding each of them to his own avatar."

"What determines the code?"

"Your birthplace. Only those born on planets belonging to the 51.893 initial systems have it in place. And only one of them at a time received the training needed."

"What... you mean like... like a prince of blood or... the Wayists' Anointed or the Dalai Lama?"

"Yes, just like that...That pretty much explains your abilities – and Dylan's, or his lack of them, more precisely. You were born in space; you carry the gene, but it can't be developed. However, with your inheritance and the experiences you had from such an early age on. you were bound to become one hell of a pilot. Dylan, on the other hand... Before the Fall, Dylan wasn't needed. Later-on though, after the Fall, after the Paradine had been killed one by one..."

"Who killed them?"

"The Abyss, mostly. You see, the Abyss... it's nothing but..." She hesitated.

"But?" Beka urged her. "Go on."

"Well, avatars gone rogue..."

"What?"

Silence fell. Trance dropped her gaze, avoiding Beka's eyes.

"Trance, is that true? The Abyss is... **you**?"

"In a way," Trance replied slowly, reluctantly. "Avatars of collapsed stars..."

"Huh?" asked Beka confusion in her voice. "I thought you said that this is what the avatars were created for: **preventing **stars from collapsing. Didn't you just say that this is also what you were given protectors for?"

Trance looked pained. "Yes, it was."

"Then how?"

"No avatar can kill its protector. But... the other controllers, the ones not keyed to it, they can be killed provided the Paradine are unprotected by their own avatars. Some of us rebelled, wanted... freedom."

"Like Flux?"

Trance nodded.

"And you?"

The girl closed her eyes, as if to hide from the question.

"Why?"

"Serving for millennia **can**... get boring, eventually. The Vedrans missed out on something: a collapsing star destroys its system, all planets, all beings... everything. But... the avatar is not destroyed in the process..."

A look of horrified disgust appeared on Beka's face.

"Your... _colleagues _just got bored?"

Trance tried to meet Beka's gaze but failed and turned her eyes downwards towards_ Andromeda_'s deck.

"For you, too?"

"I... I reconsidered..."

"What changed your mind?"

"Among others? You did. Harper. Rev. Life on the _Maru_. And then Dylan..." Trance finally lifted her eyes, her gaze searching for Beka's, pleading. "I'd never harm you. I... love you. Living with you has taught me... Has **reminded **me of my purpose: to preserve and protect life. I had gotten bored, had forgotten, but you made me remember..." She wanted to take the woman's hand, but Beka withdraw. Trance shook her head, chagrined. "Do not hate me, and please, do not fear me..."

"Not fear you? How can I not fear you? The Vedrans and the humans... Together they've created gods. Gods who eventually broke free. And are no longer bound and guided by anything but their own discretion – now that all Paradine are gone. Killed by the Abyss, by the avatars gone rogue, as you called it, while your lot – the Lambent Kith – let them... Isn't that right, Trance?"

"Don't blame me. I didn't! I protected Dylan. I..."

"I know. And I'm not blaming you. But you **do **scare me."

Trance nodded, miserably. For some moments they both stood silent. Then Beka cleared her throat:

"Some lose ends," she muttered. "My mother?"

"She has the gene... You and Rafe both have it... That's why you weren't as affected as Rhade by the Vedran training chambers."

"Does she know it?"

"Of course."

"Does she want to gain control over the Lambent Kith?"

"I... I don't think that she fully understands what it is she's doing. She just wants... power. Control. Period. She knows that the skills that can come with the gene can provide that. She is... like the Vedrans of old: she wishes for an empire."

Beka frowned. "Why?"

Trance shook her head. "I don't know. Sometimes it happens in some..."

"But it didn't happen in me. I'm not like that..."

The golden girl smiled. "Not... always. And you're not Paradine, either. You can't be."

"Is this why the Lambent Kith chose me over Dylan? Because I'm not Paradine? Because I have no avatar to protect me?"

Once more Trance approached Beka, and this time Beka let her. Carefully, almost tenderly Trance placed her hand on Beka's arm.

"You have one, Beka. You always had one."

Wide eyed, the woman looked into the face close to her, then placed her own hand over the fingers enclosed above her elbow.

"Yes, I know," she acknowledged with a small smile. _For as long as it suits you. Maybe for as long as I live – or as long as the others live, since I know you love us. But what happens thereafter?_ she thought, but didn't speak out on it. She didn't have to. Trance could see the questions written in Beka's eyes.

"If Rafe and I have the gene: are there others?" she inquired further, withdrawing again as if the closeness to Trance was too much to bear at the moment. The girl noticed, a look of sadness came across her face for a fleeting instant, but answered the question:

"Well, technically yes. Especially now that the Dragans are... are trying to fabricate them. But neither you nor Rafe nor them nor any of the others still carrying the genes are encoded to one particular avatar or other. Dylan was the last one – and he was tied to me... But you need both the encoding and the training to tesseract. That's why he always... well, sucked at it," she concluded, sounding very much like Harper. Beka had to smile.

"There are expressions, Trance," the shadow of one of her grins slowly beginning to form, "that no-one who can turn into a black hole should use. 'Suck' definitely qualifies..."

Trance smiled in return, recognizing the faint attempt to joke for what it was: a brief reminder of the time they had both traveled together. But then the next question came:

"How do Musseveni's flash-bots come into this?"

"When in danger, you produce adrenaline. The bots artificially enhance the norepinephrine secreted by the adrenal medulla through direct reaction on sub-cellular level with hydrogen molecules..."

"That they get from the DNA-strands? How?"

"I haven't figured that out yet. You see, Vedrans were really good at keeping secrets, and over the millennia some of the classified records got lost, too. Besides: they had their... master-race. How they got them was never common knowledge, especially since, yes... I suspect that flash was involved then too. The casualties at the beginning must have been enormous, even normal flash abuse sets free infinitesimal doses of adrenaline hydrogen tartrate, of which even in minuscule amounts is highly toxic. Hence the addiction, the painful withdrawal, the huge death toll. Anyway, I don't think that Musseveni has figured it all out. It still is an impressive effort, and I can't imagine how he managed..."

"He tested me, it didn't work out, at least not quite the way he thought it would, I was controlling the addiction well, but not well enough. But now he has Dylan."

"Dylan?"

"Bolivar said that Dylan was dying, not dead. Apparently word has it, they put him in stasis, to... to... work with him."

Trance winced at the euphemism.

"You think... he's still alive?" she ventured.

"I..." Beka shook her head. "I don't know. What do you think?"

The girl bit her lip, then shrugged helplessly.

"I can't sense him, Beka. And I always used to be able to sense him, somehow. However, if they have Dylan in stasis that might explain it... **and **the progress they made. They have the 'finished product', so to speak. All they had to do once they got that was to retrace the steps between Dylan and the point they were at. Everything must have gotten much easier that way: like a maze of which you know both the entrance and the exit-point. Harper would call it reverse engineering."

"But so fast?"

Trance shook her head in disagreement. "It might not have been so fast to them. There are plenty of other pocket-universes like Seefra, ones with different rates of time flow. Besides: it's not as if they're going for the whole package. Maybe they don't even know about the whole package. They want just something that works well enough in this universe here."

"Why would they stop at that?"

"Maybe they're not. Maybe that's just for starters?" Trance suggested. "I don't know, I'm afraid your guess is as good as mine on this one..."

For a few moments Beka sat quietly her eyes closed, trying to digest it all. When she opened her eyes, there was new resolve in them.

"We'll see about Dylan when we come to that bridge. Meanwhile it appears to me that you've gotten the proof Elsbett seems to be needing so much about the actual threat Musseveni poses. Thanks, Trance. I just have one last question. Did Dylan know all that?"

Trance looked at her with sadness. "No," she murmured almost whispering. "At least, I don't think so. He might have suspected some of it, but... No."

"Why not?"

"Before Seefra I didn't know how much I could tell him at a time, so I portioned the information whenever he demanded explanations. It was... always so difficult with him, in fact with all of you. I never can quite predict how you're going to react to something, what you will make of it... After Seefra... he stopped asking questions. Actually, even before Seefra... He took advice from me, but after Samsara, he never again asked."

She stopped and waited for more questions. None came. Beka leaned back on her chair seemingly lost in thought. Concealing her smile, the captain let what she'd just heard sink in as she remembered something Dylan used to say: _"We humans are... predictably unpredictable."_ It was good to know that to some degree this held true even for gods. At long last, Beka got up and walked over to Trance, lifting her from her own chair and hugging her briefly.

"I'm sorry, Trance. I'm sorry. I'm sure he didn't mean it that way. He always loved you." She smiled gently, holding her at arms' length. "We all do," she added softly

"I know you do. I... I love you, too. And it hurts. It hurts, Beka!"

"I know. I think it's supposed to." She cleared her throat. "So, let's get back to the conference and take care of this mess, shall we?"

"How?"

"We'll figure out something," said Beka switching to her customary full-blown Valentine-mode. She turned towards the exit, but Trance called her back.

"Beka?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you... do you really think Dylan's still alive? Do you think that we can get him back?"

"I don't know, Trance. That's what that Dragan over there will hopefully be able to answer. But... I do hope so. Until the very moment when I hold his dead body in my two hands, I'll hope. However, if we're to find him... We'll need your help for that, Trance."

"I know. I'm here to stay."

* * *

There always had been a sound dose of female curiosity in _Andromeda_'s personality. It made her task of monitoring everything going on onboard very pleasant; and the times when she found herself excluded from her people's – especially her captain's train of thought – irritating.

The med-deck conversation had not had privacy mode engaged, the ship had heard every word of it; and was now dying to know what Beka was making of it all. However, her captain's face as she made her way back to the briefing room betrayed absolutely nothing. It was thus with utmost relief that she saw Beka, after having made sure that the corridor was deserted, stop in front of one of the view-screens and heard herself being addressed to:

"_Andromeda_," Beka asked , "did you record my conversation with Trance?"

"Of course," responded _Andromeda_'s AI as she appeared on the nearest monitor.

"Good. Make a copy of it and then contact the operations officer. Have him send a courier with the copy of the recording to Möbius High Guard headquarters. But have it classified, triumvirate eyes only. Nonetheless, I want them to begin identifying every star that was part of the original Vedran Empire. They are also to begin covert surveillance of Trance's radiant self with the purpose of determining how we can separate... let's call them _sentient stars _from normal ones."

"Do you think she was telling the truth?" asked _Andromeda_.

"That depends on how you define truth. A good lie contains as much of the truth as possible, and we all know that Trance is nothing if not a consummate liar. Oh, in addition to the first courier I want a second one sent out to High Guard ordnance division. Extreme priority is to be placed on the production of nova bombs."

"Nova bombs? "

"Nova bombs," confirmed Beka.

"Don't you think that Trance considered the possibility you might react this way when she revealed what she did to you?" asked _Andromeda_.

"Of course she did," her captain agreed.

"And you know she would."

"Yes."

On the monitor, _Andromeda _frowned. A thin smile appeared on Beka's face.

"Cheer up! Don't you just **love **it, finding out about how clever all of us on your crew actually are?" she asked before turning around to continue her walk back to the conference. Behind her the screen remained lit for an instant.

"Oh yes," her ship muttered behind her back, "I can barely contain my excitement..."


	62. Chapter 61

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

**Chapter 61**

She marched through the corridors in a hurry, the flexi with the data Trance had provided firmly clutched in her fingers, her space-consuming strides long and fluent and displaying an air of urgency that made all crew-members quickly clear her path. At the doors to the briefing-room Beka Valentine barely acknowledged the guards' greeting with a slight nod of her head before entering the well-proportioned, pleasantly lit room behind them.

As if on cue, the heads of all people present turned around to greet her. Again, she only nodded briefly, then cleared her throat, holding up the flexi once she had come to a halt next to the arch-duchess.

"I've got something to show you, Elsbett!"

"Like what?"

"The proof you wanted…"

A surprised look on her face, the Sabra reached out for the flexi, but with a swift move of her hand, Beka took it out of reach.

"I want your people out of here first; this is strictly confidential."

"Why just my people?"

"Because mine know already…"

The haughty woman seated in front of her frowned angrily.

"What? How? If you just gained the info from my prisoner…"

"Elsbett, we combined the data he delivered with things we already knew," Beka tried to pacify her in a stern tone. For a moment, the two women locked eyes, the Nietzschean looking for answers in the steely blue gaze that kept staring down on her in an almost intimidating manner. But other than steadfast determination there was nothing else there that she could detect.

"Very well," she sighed, dismissing her entourage with an impatient nod of her head. And then, turning back to Beka: "This better be good."

"Oh, don't worry," _Andromeda_'s captain dismissed her threat with a mean, harsh smile. "It's good enough to make even Nietzscheans see reason… No offense, Rhade."

"None taken," her frowning XO replied. He scrutinized the flexi that Beka had slammed down on the table right in front of Elsbett Mossadim with narrowed, angry eyes. With Harper in Command, he and Rommie were the only ones still present in the conference room, and much as he felt flattered by his new captain's confidence in him – he felt it somewhat misplaced. He had no idea what he was supposed to already know and what new surprises the 'combined data' – as Beka had put it – held in store for him. But whatever it was, none of it could be anything else but nasty, of that he was convinced. Furtively, he tried to peer from the side and catch a glimpse at the info Bolivar's wife had just picked up, but not even his Nietzschean eyes could read from that far away at that awkward angle.

Noticing his unease, his captain stepped closer to him and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Her eyes though remained glued to the Sabra-Jaguar's face, who took all her time reading the flexi. When she was done, she calmly placed it back down on the table and lifted her eyes, searching for Valentine's gaze.

"So?"

The human barely sketched a thin, lopsided smile, while one of her eyebrows clearly had to struggle to not shoot up in an ironic expression.

"You have no idea what you're looking at, hmm?" she inquired softly, her voice almost purring.

Elsbett Mossadim pressed her lips together. Beka's smile deepened somewhat. With a lazy gesture, she pushed the flexi over to Telemachus Rhade, who picked it up, cast a look, then sharply drew his breath in. The arch-duchess tilted her head a bit, obviously surprised at his reaction.

"Okay, so what am I not getting? Because, you see… Matriarch," she offered, her hesitation before uttering the title in a tone matching Beka's sarcasm, "much as I hate to dismiss your clichéd prejudices about what makes Nietzscheans 'tick' – although I can see where they might all come from…" she added with a sideways glance at Rhade, "I have to admit that it's been a while since the last time when I got excited about various DNA-strings…"

"Believe me," Beka replied, "so has Rhade. To shake him, one really, really has to come up with something good."

"Is it true?" the subject of their conversation asked, looking up from his read and passing the flexi on to Rommie, who merely shook her head.

"I know already," she said.

Ignoring her remark, Beka pulled a chair and sat down heavily between Rhade and Elsbett.

"Yes, Rhade, it's true. That's the Dragan's DNA right in the middle; the left one's Dylan's…"

"And the right?" he wanted to know.

"Rafe's…"

His eyes widened in surprise, while Elsbett's narrowed to slits.

"Rafe's?" he echoed.

"Who's Rafe?" Bolivar's wife interrupted.

"My brother," Beka answered her dismissively. For an instant, silence fell.

"Okay…" the Nietzschean alpha female then began again. "I… have to admit: you do now have my full attention. Why are those strands almost identical?"

Beka sighed.

"Tell me, Elsbett," she then ventured almost with caution, "does the word 'paradine' ring any bells with you?"

"Of course. So do the ghidras of Volturia, Arünian mermaids and Terra's flying dragons."

"I wish it were that simple…" _Andromeda_'s captain winced. "Unfortunately though, and very much unlike the others, Paradine are not a myth. Well, not **just** a myth…"

"Right. Of course. A race more ancient than the universe, who created… it all, is that correct?" Elsbett's Mossadim's voice was dripping with irony.

"Ah, well… That's a myth…"

"Would you make up your mind…?" the Nietzschean woman insisted.

"Look, it's not that easy!" Beka snapped back at her. "Okay, here's the thing: Paradine are, of course, **not** older than the universe. And they have not created and controlled everything ever since someone else brought it to life, either. That is the myth. However, they did exist – and yes, they also did control…"

"Control what?" her XO fell in, sounding annoyed. "Look, Beka, no offense, but at Arkology there didn't really seem to be that much control of anything. And Flavin… Let's just say that he never struck me as the guy in charge. As for Dylan, whenever he managed to control anything at all, it happened in spite of his Paradine-status, not because of it…"

"I'm sorry," Elsbett interrupted him, urgency in her voice. "Did you just say Dylan? Dylan was Paradine? Ha!" she then exclaimed with some satisfaction, at Beka's uneasy nod, "I knew it that he couldn't be a mere kludge!"

"Dear God, Elsbett, snap out of it! Paradine are 'kludges', too. Go fish! And yes, whatever Dylan may or may not have been, when he bested you, he did it as a kludge."

"Umm, hello everyone!!! We were at 'control what????'…" Telemachus Rhade cut in on the argument between the two women.

"Suns, Rhade, they did control suns, more precisely the avatars of suns. At least, that was what they were supposed to do…" Beka finally spat out into the stunned faces of her interlocutors. They looked at her wide-eyed, the expressions on their features clearly stating that they thought she must have lost her mind. Annoyed, she blew up her cheeks, then let the air escape loudly. "Yeah," she sighed, "my sentiments exactly!"

And in a monotone, stern voice, she at long last passed on the information Trance had presented her with. When she was finished, the soft, low, steady humming of the ship around her seemed almost deafening in the brittle silence.

"You have got to be kidding me!!!"

She almost jumped out of her skin when finally Rhade thundered his unbelieving indignation down on her.

"I wish I were," she replied quietly, the disconcertment of the others present making her own, stupefied incredulity at the data Trance had divulged all of a sudden more palpable – and more outrageous than it had been before. Oddly, to some extent it seemed to help Rhade to come to terms somehow with what she had just told him – and to convince Elsbett, who still hadn't uttered a single syllable, that all of it was real.

"So… this really is the Nietzschean founding father trying to… to do what?" the Sabra at long last demanded to know. "Destroy his own creation by shaping yet a new master race?"

"Pretty much," Beka confirmed. "You know what they say: revolutions sooner or later always end up devouring their own children…"

"But why?"

The blonde shrugged, strangely indifferent by now to the question she had herself posed not too long ago.

"If it is any consolation at all: I don't think that any of them realizes what exactly it is that they are doing there. Musseveni is… a scientist and – maybe – to some extent, in his own weird way, a philosopher. What he wants is just to push the limits as far as possible. A Nietzschean master race with not alone no flaws, better immune systems and superb attributes, but also endowed with instincts and reflexes that would enable them to navigate all dimensions – it would be the supreme triumph of mind over matter, as far as he's concerned. My mother apparently wants nothing but power, the more absolute, the better… The Dragans want their supremacy back. Trance believes that Paul simply stole technology from the Vedrans he never fully understood. Getting Dylan enabled him to take some huge steps towards his end goal. But she doesn't think he knows what Paradine truly are."

"Which is irrelevant, in the end… If… those new Nietzscheans are what you say they are… If Musseveni is really trying to… breed… Paradine…" The Sabra swallowed, obviously still having trouble getting her head around the things she'd heard. But then her jaws got sat square and she aggressively raised her chin, throwing both Beka and Rhade defiant, menacing looks. Seeing it, Beka felt something like satisfaction spreading through her. Elsbett's next words confirmed her intuition:

"I am the First Daughter of the Sabra pride, archduchess of the Sabra-Jaguar – and I will not let some mutated upstarts to meddle with my destiny and that of all whom I consider mine."

_Good girl,_ Beka thought. It was all she could do to prevent a smile from emerging on her face. She heard Rhade next to her inhale sharply and quickly placed a hand on his forearm to prevent him from saying anything. Instead she leaned back in her chair, nothing in her demeanor suggesting that she now intended to get from Elsbett Mossadim everything she had wanted.

"And how do you plan to do that?" she mildly asked instead.

An acknowledging, almost admiring sparkle lit up the huge dark eyes of the Nietzschean female.

"Why don't **you** tell me?" she asked, still superior, but with a slight inclination of her head indicating that from now she agreed to abide by the rules Beka would be dictating. For the time being, the blonde thought.

"I will," she answered her aloud, though. "Okay, here's the plan: we split your fleet. Half of it you place under Harper's command…"

"Harper???" Elsbett exclaimed, but Beka didn't take her input into account.

"…to join Doyle at Crimeea."

"To do what?"

"That depends."

"On?"

"On what stunt the Dragans try to pull off there."

"But… what can the kl… the lieutenant commander do?" Elsbett wondered.

"Oh, don't worry," Rhade offered her a feral grin, "when it comes to final solutions on a larger scale, I doubt that you could find anyone more skilled and resourceful than our very own Mr. Harper in all of the three galaxies."

"You joke…"

"I never joke when discussing ways to rid myself of my enemies."

For a second, Elsbett mused in silence.

"Okay," she finally agreed. "And the other half?"

"Stays with me, one slip-jump away. You back me while I present the Dragans with an ultimatum," Beka elaborated. "Lure them out of their cover."

"And the ultimatum is…?"

"They extradite Paul Musseveni, Tabea and Thalia van Oudekerk; and they sign a non-aggression treaty with the Commonwealth."

"And you think they'll agree just like that?"

"No, not just like that."

"But…"

"Patience, Elsbett. First we tie the tiger up, then we extract his teeth."

"What if the tiger eats you while you are in the process of extracting?"

"That's what I have the two halves of your fleet for…"

The two women's eyes locked, for the umpteenth time, as Rhade thought. Finally, Elsbett nodded and rose to her feet.

"Fine. I'll inform my commanding officers of the new plan."

Standing up as well, Beka smiled.

"You do that. Rhade, please, escort Her Highness to her quarters."

"Aye, Ma'am."

In silence Beka and Rommie watched the two Nietzscheans take their leave. It was only after the doors had once more closed behind them that Rommie threw Beka a curious look.

"And Dylan?" she queried in a soft voice.

The mask of cautiously optimistic determination fell from Beka's features, as she turned a strangely open and somehow fragile face towards her ship's avatar, a slightly shaky hand coming up to tiredly rub her neck.

"I… I don't know, Rommie… I'll demand they'll give him to us, but…"

"You don't think he's alive?"

"I…" She hesitated. "I really have no idea. As soon as Trance says it's possible, I'll have a chat with the Dragan, but…" Again, Beka stopped, struggling for words. "So many months, Rommie… After the Dragans had him for such a long time… After... **that**," she stressed, placing her index on the flexi, "I… don't know even if I should so much as hope for him to be still alive."


	63. Chapter 62

**Chapter 62**

"Field-marshal Cuatemoc." Beka's voice was guarded, even, flat to the point of inexpressiveness, carefully devoid of any undertone that could have been taken as irony or mockery, threat, provocation or mere challenge.

"Captain," the Nietzschean greeted back. "It's been a long time."

"Indeed it has, but I trust that we may in the future get a chance to make up for it."

Despite the monitor slightly distorting the face in front of her, Beka could notice a small flicker of surprise in the old man's eyes.

"Do you now? I must confess that this does come somewhat unexpected..."

"Why is that?" _Andromeda_'s captain inquired, scrupulously polite.

"When coming to make up, one seldom arrives with a fleet – even one as... unthreatening as yours."

"Ah, but looks can be deceiving," Beka smiled at him.

"Yes, well – be this as it may, you might want to reconsider your moves and withdraw your vessels from our system's outskirts altogether before you present us with your wishes, Captain Valentine."

"I think in this case, Field-marshal, I prefer to be addressed to as 'Matriarch'."

"Really? Well, I prefer to be addressed as Admiral. After all, I am in command of an entire Nietzschean fleet, Captain, and not some infantry storm troops, you see."

Beka's smile grew broader. So the gloves were off. Well, it hadn't taken Cuatemoc long to get there. She wondered briefly if his former defeat by her hand had something to do with it – or if he was simply acting under orders. Somehow, neither she nor Jonah had been able to fully grasp the intricate chain of command the Dragans harbouring the Nietzschean founding father along with his new family were operating under.

"Oh well," she thus replied as casually as she could muster, "what's in a title? Exactly what point are you trying to make, Admiral?"

"Funny, and here I was, wondering what point you are trying to make..."

"That's quite simple, really," Beka readily answered. "As I am sure you know, I did a few months ago have the pleasure of enjoying the hospitality of Myrmidon. During my stay with your people, I couldn't help having a number of rather interesting developments brought to my attention in... the most convincing manner possible. Developments that the Commonwealth deems to be almost as impressive as the Drago-Khatzov do, no doubt."

"I can assure you, Captain Valentine, that whatever you believe to have perceived during your visit with us, it was all due to the fact that you were in... rather poor health, as you may recall, because of that... unfortunate habit of yours... A circumstance our doctors did try to help you out of to the best of their abilities," the Dragan brought forward so smoothly, it rendered Beka speechless for an instant. Her stupefaction did not go unnoticed, although Cuatemoc did have the presence of spirit to hide his satisfaction as he continued in the same, mild tone: "I trust you have completely recovered?"

She had to swallow dryly, but in the end managed to answer him:

"Yes, thank you." A moment of awkward silence ensued while the woman struggled to regain her cool. She didn't quite succeed, but finally she pushed herself forward: "Well, Admiral, you understand, I'm sure, that I simply had to return to you, to... express my gratitude."

"Consider it done," he told her dryly. "And now?"

"Now I believe that there **still** are some matters left that we need to discuss."

"Unfortunately, Captain, this belief is not mutual: at this moment the Drago-Khatzov leaders do not think to have any topics in common with the Commonwealth."

"You shot down a Commonwealth pilot."

"You mean Captain Hunt? Please, there was a Commonwealth slip fighter invading our air space. We hailed him, he didn't respond; we didn't know who he was, nor what he wanted. It was a pure act of self-defence."

"You chased him into your space, Cuatemoc; you shot him down, you killed him and then you put him on display like booty..."

"We merely presented him to the... public to show that all of it had been an... unfortunate accident resulting in the good captain succumbing to his dreadful, dreadful injuries, that we deeply regretted, of course. Chased him? Shot him down? Really, can you prove this? I don't think so. So: if this is what you wanted to **discuss** with us, I'm sorry. Because in that case I'm much afraid that there really is nothing I can do for you..."

"No, I'm well aware of that;" Beka interrupted, keeping her voice under tight control. "Captain Hunt's fate would really be only a minor point on our schedule, I can assure you of that."

"Oh? And the major points would be what exactly?"

"Broader topics: Crimeea, Ral Parthia... You know, that sort of thing."

"I'm not sure I know what you are referring to... In fact, I am quite sure that I have no idea what you're talking about: Ral Parthia has been cut off from slipstream years ago – and Crimeea is nothing but a death-trap."

"And the Dragans squirming around in both systems – of whom we might even have... found some, whom we now might even shelter on our ships?"

"Either a product of your imagination, Captain, or something you might have misunderstood while on Myrmidon. Or some... Nietzscheans, maybe even Dragans who lied to you. You've been probably set up."

"I see," Beka replied dryly. "Okay, tell you what: why don't we cut to the chase? You confer with your... leaders, maybe you come to the conclusion that you do know what I'm referring to, after all. And then you get back to me, all right?"

"I wouldn't want to impose so much on your – and your fleet's – time."

"Oh, Admiral, it would be my pleasure. After such a prolonged stay in your lovely system, I was starting to miss it, you know."

"Still, you might want to... withdraw a little while waiting for our answer, you know... get some rest, give your ships some time off."

"Thanks, but I think we'll just keep our positions for the time being."

"Very well, Captain Valentine. In that case, please do bear in mind that, whatever you plan on doing while you stick around here: you will always have a Nietzschean fleet standing in your way."

"Well," Beka raised an eyebrow at the unveiled threat, "I am much afraid that this goes both ways, Admiral; you see, I may have a Nietzschean fleet standing in my way, but I also happen to have both a Commonwealth and a Nietzschean fleet **behind** me, so whatever you plan on doing with **your** Nietzschean fleet while I stick around here, I strongly suggest you either refrain from it altogether or... simply choose to stand somewhere else, making damn' sure that wherever this is, it is **not** in my way."

"I'll deliver your message to the Dragans."

"Great. That's settled then. I'll be eagerly awaiting your... – I trust – positive answer. Valentine out."

/

She felt grateful for the fact that no-one seemed to notice that the hand with which she cut communications off was shaking lightly. Still, she couldn't prevent herself from biting down hard on her teeth and leaning a bit too heavily on her console, in a strenuous attempt to control herself, although she was aware that both Rhade and Rommie were observing her closely from the side. Breathing deeply, she finally turned around to face them.

"So, what do you think? How did it go?" Beka wanted to know from them.

Rhade shrugged.

"Difficult to tell. We're here with impressive enough numbers. Still, Cuatemoc seemed rather unperturbed. Either he's bluffing or..."

"Or he has something in the backhand to fuel his confidence," Rommie concluded his thought. "And we all know what that is."

"We do?" the Nietzschean asked back in a slightly aloof manner.

"Yes," the avatar responded evenly. "They have Dylan, thanks to him the enhanced Dragans from Ral Parthia... and who knows how many of their kind trying to infiltrate the Sabra-Jaguar and – presumably – all other prides loyal to the Commonwealth. They won't come to the table, as long as we don't come up with a more convincing motive for them to do so, not as long as they believe that there is a fleet of super Nietzscheans they can rely upon to come to their rescue. So: what do you plan to do, Captain, while awaiting their answer?"

"What would you suggest?"

Rhade bit his lip, while Rommie threw Beka an uncommitted glance.

"What would you like to do?" she asked, instead of an answer.

"If it's okay with Trance, I think I'd like to have a word with our Dragan guest."

Rhade growled lowly.

"What do you hope to gain from that? Do you really think he knows that much? And, if he does: do you really think you can make him tell you? I mean: if Elsbett and her... methods didn't do the trick... And there is only so much we can do with him under Commonwealth-rule."

"Yes," Beka agreed, a small smile on her face, "I know that. And you know that. But... he doesn't, right?"

/

Trance's answer was positive: the Dragan Beka had brought in from Venceremos had recovered satisfactorily. There was nothing speaking against interrogating him on whatever issues the captain felt in need of clarification.

Rhade close on her heels, Beka made her way towards the tiny, austere room on V-deck, to which she had ordered the prisoner to be taken. She briefly came to a halt outside of it, turning to her XO.

"Stay here, Rhade, and keep a close eye on what's happening in there on the monitor."

"Look, if you don't want me around at all, I can also..."

"No, you misunderstand: I do think that it might be better if I question him alone; but I DO want you to stick around and..." She hesitated and pressed her lips tightly together for a moment, her eyes narrowing, before continuing: "I... I might lose it in there. If I do, step in. Whatever happens, we need this guy alive."

The Nietzschean's dark eyes widened.

"Surely you don't mean to tell me that you would..."

"Telemachus, I don't mean to tell you anything, I just..." Beka took a deep breath, seemingly weighing her words. "I feel so tight, Rhade, as if I'm about to snap. I'm pushing the limits, I'm trying to bluff and threaten and scare everyone out of their wits, hoping they will deliver what we want and what I think we need to win in this fight. But fact is that there are times when the anger, the... the hate is nearly choking me, when I... don't really know how much of what I say and do is just a bluff or..." She shook her head and briefly wiped her eyes with her hand. "I don't know, Rhade... Just stay here and... and keep an eye on things."

/

She sat down at the table with the two chairs – the only furniture in the brightly lit cubicle, with her back at the door and trying to display an air as detached, as relaxed as possible. Opposite her, the Dragan – a huge, massive man with an eerily pretty face too delicate for his stature – was eyeing her suspiciously.

"I'm Rebekkah B. Valentine, captain of the Commonwealth ship _Andromeda Ascendant_."

"I know. Am I onboard the _Andromeda_?"

"Yes."

"How did I get here?"

"You were a gift."

"A gift?"

She nodded.

"From Charlemagne Bolivar to me."

"Why would he do that?" the Nietzschean snorted in disbelief.

"Oh, I am his Matriarch, Mother of all Nietzscheans, yadda, yadda, yadda... You know the drill," Beka explained, her tone slightly bored.

"It won't work with me."

The broad, wolfish grin suddenly flashed up on the woman's face. Unaccustomed to it, the Dragan stared at her wide-eyed. It looked... joyous and feral at the same time, a slightly frightening combination, even for him. He threw a look around.

"Either way, this is a Commonwealth vessel," he stated. "I know your regulations, your treaties, your... _principles_," he concluded in a somewhat contemptuous manner. "You can't torture me; and even if you could – what do you think can you achieve, where Elsbett Mossadim failed?"

"I won't torture you," Beka quietly informed him, her voice almost gentle.

"So then what?"

"I will just keep you."

"Keep me? Keep me where?"

"Here. In this room. By tonight you'll have a bed placed over in that corner. You'll be served three meals a day. You'll be – heavily guarded – brought to a gym to exercise. You'll be cleaned and pampered and kept as healthy and as fit as one could possibly wish for. In here. Inactive. And alone. Until you tell me what I want to know. Or for the rest of your life, for all I care. Your choice."

"Is that supposed to scare me? I won't tell you."

"I don't know if it scares you, but it will scare your genes. In one month's time, I can assure you, you will have every cell in your body screaming at you to break out, to find a mate, to reproduce, to fight, to do what you're meant to do. Only you won't..."

"You can't do that!" he interrupted her violently.

"Watch me!"

"We're not part of the Commonwealth, but we've signed the treaty of Machen Alpha with you: you can't keep me here indefinitely."

"The Drago-Khatzov of Illion have signed that treaty. But when you approached Bolivar's relatives you told them you were from Ral Parthia, they've testified to that."

"And?"

"And Lord High Admiral Cuatemoc of the Drago-Khatzov just assured me on behalf of his pride – and on record, I might add – that they know absolutely nothing about Ral Parthia. You see, that means you don't exist."

"I don't believe you."

"_Andromeda_!"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Play the records of my conversation with the Admiral."

"Aye."

A monitor emerged from a panel inserted in the left wall, the voice and face of the Dragan admiral a tad blurred, but nonetheless unmistakingly him.

The Dragan listened to it all like petrified; when it ended, his eyes flickered up, then locked with Beka's, who looked back at him steadfastly, her gaze almost serene. The minutes seemed to drag on and on and on, while the man seated and chained in front of her kept searching her face, her eyes for answers. And it felt to her as if hours had passed, when he finally said:

"You could have faked all that."

"I could. But I didn't. And I think you know it."

He squeezed his eyes tightly for a split second. Then he opened them again, looked directly at her and nodded:

"What do you want to know?"

_Everything_, she thought_. I want to know the names of the people you've contacted on Venceremos, I want to know everyone you approached with all the other Commonwealth-prides, I want to know what you and the likes of you really can do, I want to know how far you've come on Ral Parthia, how many you are, how I can get there without having my brain flash fried, I want to know..._ But when she opened her mouth, none of that came out. Instead she heard herself draw in a deep breath, and then a dry, taut, hard voice she didn't recognise as her own asked coldly:

"What happened to Dylan Hunt?"


	64. Chapter 63

**Chapter**** 63**

The doors barged open so fast, it startled both of them when Telemachus Rhade stormed into the tiny chamber.

„Captain!"

Beka had to blink.

„What?" she demanded to know.

„We need you in Command."

„What, **now**?" came an outraged question.

Her second-in-command stared sternly past her.

„Can't wait," he replied in a hard, inflexible voice, his eyes betraying nothing of what was going on. For an instant Beka looked as if she would murder him with looks only, but then her lids dropped and, drawing in a deep breath, she pushed herself up from the chair, her hands planted solidly on the table in front of her.

"Fine. We'll continue this later," she then dismissively threw a phrase down at the Dragan, who was watching the scene with poorly hidden curiosity. Abruptly turning around, _Andromeda_'s captain strode out of the room, Rhade hot on her heels.

"This better be good," she threw backwards over her shoulder, once the doors to the small interrogation room had closed behind them both, her well on her way towards the next exit that separated the surveillance chamber from the corridors. Before she reached the dors, she stopped though, noticing that the commander was not following her.

"Rhade?" she turned around, inquiringly. "Mind hurrying up?"

"No need," he mumbled sullenly.

Her eyebrows rose in an expression that seemed both aloof and angry.

"What?" she demanded to know, her eyes narrowing.

The Nietzschean shrugged.

"You said to step in when I happen to notice that you start losing it..."

Silence fell, heavy and cold, between the two officers. The man's eyes stared defiantly at the blonde woman who seemed frozen on her spot, her blue gaze distant and angry at the same time while she was trying to glare him down.

"Come again?" she then finally requested, her voice deadly calm. "Define 'losing it', Rhade. I haven't touched the guy with a single finger. And I had no intention of doing so, either."

"There are more ways of 'losing it', as you called it, than by turning people into pulp the way Elsbett seems to prefer it. And while I admit that you just did a fine job in cracking the guy up, I also noticed that you were just about to give him an advantage over you..."

"Dammit, Rhade! I wasn't giving him any advantage, I was just playing it by the book, starting to get the less important bits out of him..."

"That's crap, Beka, and you know it. While I admit that information about Dylan's fate is indeed very low on our 'need-to-know' priority list, your face was telling him something else."

Beka looked him in the eye, opening her mouth to respond sharply to him, but then, while he was watching her, bracing himself for the sharp-tongued argument she no doubt had in mind, she seemed to deflate, as if all anger, air, strength was leaving her. She swallowed dryly, then tried to moisten her lips, but didn't seem to succeed.

"You... you don't understand..." she finally ventured, lamely.

To her surprise, she saw the dark face in front of her darkening even more, the eyebrows drawn together, Rhade's lips curling up in a mocking grimace. A barked, short, disdainful laugh escaped him.

"No, of course I don't!" he exclaimed with contempt. "How could I possibly understand? After all, I'm just a Nietzschean, aren't I? What do the likes of me know about friendship, affection and loyalty?"

"That's not what I meant..."

"Maybe. But this is nonetheless pretty much what you think. Incidentally, though, you happen to be wrong, and you know why? Because, no matter how you view the situation, **he** was my friend, too. He was my friend even before I was his, despite my race, despite my ancestor's betrayal, despite my face and the fact that I was opposing him. He stepped in between me and my adversaries, me and the historical reality I had been taught to ignore, protecting me from the truth, shielding me from my enemies, defending me even when he had to do it against his very own. So I kindly beg you to no longer tell me that I don't understand, because in fact I very well can. I understand what each and every one of you is going through, because this is exactly what I go through myself..."

"I know. I know, Rhade. It's just that I..."

"Yeah, it's just that you..." he cut her off aggressively. "It is just that you are, on top of the hurt, sadness and despair you share with us all, dragging behind you a long chain of 'What if'-s and 'If only'-s. You see, Beka, I do understand even **that**. I've seen it all before with you – and with him. Ever since the first day I met you, I had the 'pleasure' of watching the two of you make the same mistakes over and over again out of fear of and for each other, because you were too scared to change the status-quo either way. And I know, that if – by some miracle – we will somehow manage to find Dylan alive, no matter what you promise yourself now, no matter what he might have promised himself back then: the two of you will get back to your old ways, continuing this insane dance around the issues you have with each other until one of you, one of us or even all of us end up dead."

The Nietzschean stopped his tirade, breathing hard and with eyes throwing angry glances at her, who had continuously paled and then paled some more listening to his outburst. He waited with his lips slightly parted in order to interrupt her, should she try and defend herself, but Beka made no attempt at that. At long last, he sighed.

"Now look me in the eye and tell me once more, how you weren't losing it in there," Rhade finally challenged.

She shook her head, once more her dried-up tongue slipping out in vain to wet her lips. Then she drew her breath in, shuddering. A hand came up to brush through the blonde mane, then fell again.

"I won't," Beka offered. Her voice sounded hollow, defeated. "What now?" she wanted to know.

The man shrugged.

"Now... You stay put. I'll take it from here."

/

He entered the room purposefully and let himself fall on the chair Beka had vacated, apparently indifferent to the curious gaze the prisoner kept on him.

"What's this?" the man wanted to know.

"Nothing," Rhade shrugged with a smile, "just me continuing where Captain Valentine had to bow out of this conversation..."

The Dragan grinned wolfishly.

"Because she had some other, oh! so important matters to attend to?"

"Exactly."

"Hardly. By the look of it, there doesn't seem to be anything more important to her than to know what happened to Dylan Hunt."

Rhade's eyebrows rose, faking mild interest.

"And is this something you could provide some insight on?"

"And if I could?"

"Well, then... By all means, go ahead!" the lieutenant commander encouraged him in a friendly tone.

"What do I get out of this?"

The man from Terrazed shrugged.

"A chance to stay alive and talk to us some more?" he offered mildly.

The younger Nietzschean frowned.

"About what?"

"Geez, I don't know... How you people are trying to infiltrate the Commonwealth-prides, how much you've already succeeded at that, where you home-base is and – if it's Ral Parthia..." He interrupted himself, chuckling softly as he saw the other's surprise, then continued: "Oh yes, we know... When does the tunnel open? How? Can you control that? Is there another way?"

Silence fell and dragged on, as Rhade waited for his words to sink in, make the proper effect on the prisoner.

"That's a lot of questions..." the Dragan finally said.

"Do you have the answers?"

"If I do – why should I give them to you?"

The friendly smile did not for an instant drop from Rhade's face.

"Because you want a life instead of vegetating along in this cell, with only Captain Valentine's –albeit thrilling – company for the rest of your days?" he suggested. "Because if you don't tell us, we'll find someone else like you, who does?"

"Getting me was already a lucky break. You can't capture us all..."

"Well, Captain Valentine might want to try, you see... And knowing her, I wouldn't want to bet that she won't succeed."

"Like I said," the Dragan repeated in an obstinate tone, "you can't get us all..."

Slamming his hand down on the table in a deafening hit, Rhade suddenly jumped up to his feet and leant over.

"You have no idea," he almost whispered, his face mere inches away from the other man's. "The things we..." He interrupted himself, hesitated, then went on with a grin: "The things **she** can do to get her way..." He shook his head, then sat back down. "You – or someone else – will tell her what she wants to know. **All** she wants to know, because you see, if the info on Captain Hunt happens to not match what she wants to hear about him, you will need something else to... placate her or, at least, keep her from destroying all of you. Or make us keep her from killing you all."

The other man grinned incredulously.

"You're all Commonwealth. Are you telling me that you would let her go on with an overkill? Provided, of course, she'd have the means to do so?"

"I am telling you that if this is what she intends to do, there is no-one who could stop her. Unless, of course, the info you provide us with on all issues **other **than Dylan Hunt are deemed by us so... valuable that we might feel compelled to protect you and your lot from the wrath you brought upon yourselves."

The Dragan scrutinized Telemachus Rhade through narrowed eyes.

"You really would let her kill? For him?"

Rhade opened his arms wide in a helpless gesture.

"We would, of course, do our best to prevent it. Alas..." He didn't finish. Seeing his prisoner still weighing him, he sighed. "Look, she is a female alpha. In fact, she probably is THE female alpha..."

Understanding gleamed in his opponent's eye.

"So far, so good. And Dylan Hunt was her mate?"

Rhade shook his head, denying the statement.

"But then..."

"He was never her mate. She did pick him, though," the commander explained. "Which was also good," he added with a pensively regretful expression on his face. "But then you took him from her. Bad. **Very** bad." A thin smile on his lips, he nodded towards the other. "Yes, my boy. I see you get the picture now. Well, how about you tell me what we want to know – and give me something to work with, so I can keep you and your pathetic lot safe from Mommy Dearest?"

There was anew a brief silence. Then the Dragan nodded:

"Okay, I will tell you." And, slightly ironical: "Starting with Dylan Hunt?"

Rhade shook his head.

"Are you in a rush? Let's start with your name, shall we?"

/

He hesitated an instant , his back turned towards the prisoner, trying to force his face into a neutral expression before he opened the doors to the rooms next to the interrogation chamber. He had it all on record, of course, but had asked _Andromeda_ to switch the mikes off at some point during the questioning, after Beka had called him out a third time, reacting to what she heard while listening to the Dragan answering the commander. Three times within a quarter of an hour!

After that Telemachus Rhade had had enough; they had another not exactly cosy heart-to-heart, and then he had the room sealed off. But now he wondered if this had been such a smart a move. Now he had to face her, telling her all that he had been able to gain from Peter Marconi. Knowing she wouldn't like the conclusions they had to draw. Knowing that she would fight it – them ... **him**, with everything she he had. Wishing he could spare her. Knowing he couldn't do it.

He sighed and pushed the button.

"About time!" Beka exclaimed. "Well?"

He took the sight of her in, standing stiffly in front of him, feet apart, arms crossed on her chest, bracing herself for... whatever... Rhade cleared his throat.

"Just give me a moment first, okay?"

"What?" Her voice was loud, too loud.

"Beka, please," he sighed wearily. "There's something I have to check with Trance first. Okay?"

She met his eyes with an open, frank look, searching them for answers. And then she nodded.

"Fine," she agreed her, her voice barely audible. "We'll all meet in the briefing room in half an hour. _Andromeda_, take care of the Dragan."

A/N: Thanks a lot for the reviews, everyone.


	65. Chapter 64

A/N: Umm, okay... Here's the thing: opinions seem to greatly vary on whether I am updating too slow or too fast. And since I can't make up my mind which is the right one, I've decided to throw out the next chapter now already. Have fun with it!

**Chapter**** 64**

Telemachus Rhade strode into the briefing room with a grim look upon his face and Trance Gemini in his tow, meeting the eyes of all other persons present without so much as the shadow of a greeting smile. Seeing his stance, the already somber expression of Beka clouded up even more, her mood not going unnoticed by the others assembled around the long glass table.

"Rhade, sit down!" she offered, indicating a vacant seat right next to her. The tall man accepted the invitation and let himself fall down, a bunch of flexis firmly clasped in his right hand. In fact, his fingers were clutched around the malleable sheets so tightly, his knuckles showed white. _Andromeda_'s captain felt coldness starting to spread within her stomach, a dreading, sickening feeling that she had so far valiantly tried to keep at bay. She met her first officer's dark gaze head-on.

"They have Dylan on Ral Parthia…" she said, stating, not questioning him. He nodded, his eyes staring at hers in a mixture of sorrow, compassion and regret. She sighed.

"So he's alive?" From the other end of the long table Harper, oblivious to the tension that suddenly seemed to fill up the room, blurted out. "He lives? He really made it? Well, what do you know? To quote a former mutual disappointment of ours: 'Where there's life, there's hope!' Right?"

Nobody answered him. The sharp, small, rapidly shifting blue eyes of the engineer moved from one of his crew-mates to the other in a vain search for someone willing to answer him, to give him the reassurance he wanted to hear.

"Right?" he insisted once more, albeit in a tone much quieter. "Beka?" he then ventured after a short while, his voice now almost plaintive, his eyes wide and glued to her face, that seemed to be growing more and more stony and pale by the second. But she didn't answer, so he turned to the Nietzschean: "Rhade?"

The commander shook his head as if to physically clear it from some cobwebs, then turned around in his seat to look at the Terran.

"He hasn't exactly 'made' it, Harper…" he sighed. "And yes, he's on Ral Parthia. Bolivar was correctly informed. After shooting him down, they patched him up – summarily. Put him in stasis. Extracted samples. Took him out of it a few times, put him through tests, then back to stasis. And so on… After the first couple of weeks they brought him to Ral Parthia. The tunnel… wormhole… whatever you want to call it, it… it's some sort of…"

"Some sort of a keyhole to other universes, dimensions, just like the tunnel of the Derivas," Rommie inserted.

"Exactly," Rhade confirmed. "Or like the Route of Ages."

"Yes, yes, I know…" Harper threw in, impatiently. "Inconsistent structure, fluctuating time-line, unimaginably strong gravitational pull. We've been through all of this… What's the news, Rhade?"

"The news is that since Uxulta catapulted Ral Parthia into its pocket universe more than 360 years have elapsed there."

The room fell silent, the implications of that bit of information obvious to all of them.

"So… so when have they finally brought Dylan to Ral Parthia?" Harper asked in the long end. Rhade merely contented himself to look at him sternly. Slowly, the Terran nodded his understanding. "I see… Did they… did they bother to… thaw him up?" he then wanted to know. A small flinch was to be seen on Rommie's face at this irreverent choice of words, but other than that no-one else showed a reaction other than moving their eyes back to Rhade.

"Well, no…" the Nietzschean admitted. "But that's not necessarily a good thing. According to what Marconi says, they can't."

"Why not? Besides: why did then they keep him for so long deep-frozen?" Harper insisted. "It doesn't make sense. By now they must long since have gained all data that he could have provided them with. Anything else beyond that would have required long series of tests and experiments with the… the… I mean…"

"You mean 'in vivo' instead of…" Trance, who had remained standing at the doors, tried to help him out.

"Yeah, precisely," the engineer agreed, interrupting her again. "So?"

"So, they kept him in stasis because they would lose him otherwise; the injuries he's sustained from the crash… They handled the burns, but they would need to perform vascular surgery on him…"

"So why didn't they?"

"They don't know how…" Trance explained, then sighed seeing their uncomprehending faces. "Dylan… Beka, I already tried to explain it. He reacts differently, when you injected him with the bots Musseveni had already altered…"

"Yes, I know, he had sort of a reverse reaction, OD-ed and… and everything they tried, other than washing as many of the nanobots out of his system as possible and let him fight for himself, was futile."

"Yes, and apparently any further use of nanobots – even normal ones – would cause the same effect, since his body has retained enough of them to start reacting the instant they get… new material. They… they would alter the bots to flash-bots and then they would… begin to reproduce on their own. Which simply means that all means at one's disposal: MIC, nanobots, whatever… can't be used on him."

"And all of this is also completely beside the point," Beka interrupted.

"What do you mean?" her chief engineer snapped at her.

"Think, Seamus," she urged him. "If they had him for so long that there is by now already a full-grown genetically engineered Nietzschean generation, it means they have an army ready, waiting on the other side of that tunnel. Why aren't they here yet?"

"They can't control the tunnel," Rhade told her. "They haven't figured out a way to open and close it as they need it. What comes through is stuck on one side of it or other until the next opening occurs. But once they've figured that out…"

"What does that matter?" Harper exploded. "Why don't we take the _Maru_ to the opening of the tunnel? I can open it, I've done it before. It's not pretty, it's dangerous, but it works. We get that guy you captured to fly us through, we fetch Dylan, bring him back and then we blast that damn' hole to hell… I mean, it's not like it would be the first time…"

"We can't risk it, Harper," Beka contradicted. "We will take the _Maru_ and we will open the tunnel. And we will blast it to hell."

"But?"

"But we can't afford to lose time with trying to retrieve Dylan's body," Rommie told him flatly.

The blond man stared at her mouth agape.

"What? His _body_? He's **alive**!..." He let his eyes wander from her face past the others' until they fell again on the captain. "Bek'?"

She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, but then met his gaze head-on.

"She's right," she told him, in a toneless voice.

"You have **got** to be kidding!" the Earther blew up again. "I mean… I mean, Beka, come on… After all those months spent in grief for Dylan like… like in a goddamn' Greek tragedy…"

"Harper, that's enough," Rommie warned him lowly, briefly checking Beka's clenched jaws in the stony-white face.

"Is it?" the young man ranted on. "Rommie, I can't believe that…"

"Dismissed, everyone," Beka's voice cut through. "Mr. Harper and I need a few minutes alone."

They all hurried to their feet and left the premises as fast as they could, while the engineer was doing his best to keep silent at least for as long as the others needed to leave them alone. But once the doors closed behind the last one of them, he held back no longer.

"What's the matter, Beka? Have you grown too comfortable in that captains chair?"

"Don't be an idiot, Seamus," the woman admonished him in a tone both severe and tired. "Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know what to believe. I mean… Beka, ever since you woke up on med-deck you've been…" He hesitated, but then with a deep breath he plunged again into the argument: "Beka, for months now I've been watching you, watching us all struggling to keep up appearances while in fact we are drifting more and more apart, despairing each day a bit more. And you… you… Truth is, no-one drifted farther, no-one despairs more than you… Beka, I don't think that there has been a man mourned more since Andromanche lost Achilles…"

"Andromanche lost Hector, who was killed by Achilles," _Andromeda_'s hologram inserted, materializing next to them.

"Yeah, whatever…" the engineer snapped at her. "Could we jut postpone the scholar debate about it until later and for now focus on the issue at hand?"

"Harper is right, Rommie. This isn't helpful. Stay out of this," Beka ordered her lowly.

"You haven't engaged privacy mode."

"Rommie!"

"Fine, fine. Don't mind me, but I think you have to make Harper respect certain limits… I was just trying to help," the ship pouted at her, blinking herself out. Harper sighed.

"Right… Where were we?"

"At Andromanche losing Achilles," Beka offered.

"Do you think this is funny?" he threw at her, off-balance, his voice sounding hurt and insulted.

Her jaws squared while her eyes narrowed.

"Why? Do I look as if I think this is funny?"

"Then I don't get you, Beka. I don't get you at all. I mean, here we are, with our first chance, our **very **first chance in ages to get him back…"

"Harper, didn't you listen to what Rhade and Trance said? We have a real chance of getting WHAT back? A living corpse?"

"It doesn't have to stay that way. Just because the Dragans for all their supposed smartness couldn't figure a way…"

"Seamus…"

"Beka, think! We… we get him back and then… We keep him in stasis like they did until we find… a solution to the problem…"

"And this will take us how long?"

"What?" He stared at her dumbfounded, startled by the direct, to-the-point question. "Wha… what do you mean?"

"I mean, how long do you think it will take us to find a way to help him?"

The younger man shrugged.

"Dunno… I'm no expert on this, hell… I'm not even a doctor. As long as it takes us, I s'ppose…"

"A month?" she pushed further. "Three? Or will it be more like one year? Or three years? Thirty? Three hundred?"

He scrutinized her sharply.

"Beka, I know…"

"You know shit. He left me in charge, Harper. Of his ship, of his Commonwealth – and of whatever has to be decided on his behalf while he is incapable to do so. And I will not endanger the tiniest bit of his legacy, just so we get back a shell of him to look at. A **living** shell, Harper, one that leaves open the possibility that one day he might have to go again through the torment he had to live through when we first pulled him out of that black hole…"

"He… wouldn't…"

"What? Be physically, consciously aware of how much time has elapsed? He wasn't the first time around, either. But that didn't really help him much now, did it? Don't kid yourself, Seamus. We weren't aware of the time dilation, either, when we got stranded on Seefra… Need I remind you, though, what it did to each one of us, including Dylan? Do you remember what it did to you, to Trance? Rhade, me? We nearly went insane…"

"But Dylan…"

"Given time, it would have happened to him, too." She paused for a moment, recollecting her thoughts, then shook her head with determination. "No. No, Seamus, I will not risk the Commonwealth as long as there is so much as the shadow of a chance that one day he'll wake up once more in an unknown universe, populated by nothing but strangers and with the knowledge that everything he fought for, loved and treasured got destroyed on his behalf, because of him… **I won't!**" A tender look in her eyes, she approached the man and drew him into a hug. "I'm sorry, Seamus, believe me, I am terribly sorry. But you know as well as I do that, for all of Dylan's courage and – sometimes – bravado, this is the one thing he's always been terrified of."

For a moment, he just kept himself rigid in the embrace, but then she felt the stiffness leave him with a sigh, as his arms came up around her waist, encircling her, too.

"Dear God, Beka…" he mumbled into her shoulder. And as he felt her body jerk in a suppressed sob, he held her tighter.

They stood like that for a short time, but then she withdrew. Furtively, he turned away, hiding is eyes from her while he was clearing his throat.

"So what's the plan?"

"Like I said," she answered, "Rhade and Rommie stay here with half of Elsbett's fleet, dry the Dragans out of supplies and try to find out, where exactly they have their dockyards, armament factories and weapons hidden."

"For some… surgical intervention?"

"Precisely."

"And we?"

"We take the rest of the fleet and join Doyle, clean the whole system from whatever came through already, open the damn' tunnel and blast it to hell."

"'kay, boss," he agreed with some sort of a half-smile, but clearly lacking all enthusiasm. But then he shook his head once more. "Still, Beka, I can't believe we're giving up on Dylan."

She bowed her head, watching her feet in silence for a few seconds. When she lifted her face again to look at him, he noticed with surprise that her eyes were more alive than he had seen them ever since they had gotten her back.

"I will never give up on Dylan," she told him, her voice forcefully accentuating each one of her words. "Never. How far are you and Trance with that slipstream-scout, Seamus?

His eyes widened.

"We… we're making nice progress, boss."

"Do better. Get me all information there is. **All **of it, Harper."

"Like in… another way to Ral Parthia?"

She grinned.

"Boss, it may turn out as some sort of Hasturi's Trip revisited."

"It doesn't matter."

"Okay, I'm on it," he said.

"Go!" Beka dismissed him, with a light smile he replied to with one of his own. Left alone, she brought her hands up to her face and covered it with them, then spread her fingers and brushed briefly through her hair before straightenening her shoulders and lifting her chin in a defiant way.

"_Andromeda_?"

"Yes, captain?" It was one of the monitors coming to life instead of the hologram. Beka sighed. Someone was obviously mighty pissed off with her. She would have to take care of this, too. But for now there were more pressing matters.

"Call back the others, will you? And get Jonah Draeger here ASAP, please."


	66. Chapter 65

A/N: So, I'll be gone till September 11th - so there is one more update for the road. See you all then. And thanks for the feedback, folks.

**Chapter 65**

Somehow, it took the news about a week to reach Rhade. And he probably even then wouldn't have found out, had Harper not had a slip of tongue. When it happened though, it didn't take the engineer long to figure out that he should have kept a better check on his mouth.

"What do you mean, you're ready to leave to join the _Maru_ and then it will be like old times, only better?" Rhade had asked casually.

"Well, you know... just us all from the old crew back together, only this time we'll have Doyle along for the ride instead of Rev, and you have to admit she's somehow more of a sight for sore eyes..." His voice trailed off seeing the Nietzschean frown at him: "What?"

"**All** of you?" Rhade hissed. He didn't wait for an answer. Harper's expression was self-explanatory, and so he just stormed off in search of his captain.

All eyes were on him as he barged through the doors of Command, not greeting anyone on his way to the captain's console, where Beka was having a quiet talk with a junior officer, heads bowed over a flexi.

"Captain, I need a word with you."

The blonde looked up from the data she was studying.

"Sure, just give me a min..." She stopped seeing his expression, then nodded slowly. "Then again, there's no time like the present," she agreed, her hand tapping lightly the shoulder of the younger woman. "Carry on, I'll be right back," she ordered with a smile, then turned around and strode towards her office, not bothering to check whether Rhade was following her or not.

When they reached the captain's office, she sat down, motioning her XO to take a seat, but not before she had checked that the doors were firmly sealed.

"Before you start shouting at me, do you think we need privacy mode engaged?" she asked solicitously.

Rhade opened his mouth, then closed it again, taken a bit aback.

"I... I have no intention of shouting at you," he then brought forward.

"No? I'm relieved. In Command, you certainly looked like you might."

He pressed his lips together, tightly controlling himself to keep the anger at bay.

"Well, what do you expect, Beka? When – if at all – where you going to tell me of the change of plans?"

"What change?" the woman inquired, looking genuinely puzzled at him.

"Oh, you know... the part where you take off with Harper and Trance to Crimeea..."

"Oh, that," she murmured vaguely.

"Yes, Beka. THAT!"

"I was gonna tell you..."

"When exactly?"

She shrugged. Avoided his eyes.

"Soon," she then offered lamely.

He looked at her, waiting, expecting something else, something more, but when nothing else came, he snorted and jumped up.

"Aren't you taking this 'Dylan'-thing a little too far?" he asked her in a harsh tone that now was indeed slowly rising.

She nearly flinched. It might have gone unobserved by someone else, but Rhade was not 'someone'. He noticed – and he started wondering. Drago's bones, what was she up to?

He had come down to Command in a fit of rage because they had left him out of the loop, not telling him from the start that, contrary to the original plan, Beka had decided to lead half of the fleet that was to head out for Crimeea instead of commanding the half remaining in place at Illion together with the bulk of the Commonwealth forces. Obviously, the plan now was that he was to remain behind, while she took off to... Telemachus Rhade narrowed already small eyes to slits until they could almost no longer be seen in his dark face, scrutinising his superior officer even sharper.

"What 'Dylan'-thing?" Hearing her voice ask the question in a tone so neutral and flat and un-Beka-ish as he could imagine aided to his suspicions.

"The thing where you just go ahead with some plan or other, informing the rest of us about it strictly on some need-to-know basis of which the logic escapes anyone but you..." he said, observing her even closer. She seemed relieved. Okay, so obviously there was another 'Dylan'-thing going on. He opted for the indirect approach. "Dammit, Rebbekah, if I'm to stay back and keep things going while you rush off to blow up that tunnel, don't you think we should discuss strategies first?"

"Of course, I was going to that..."

"When?"

"Soon. Look, Rhade, Harper just told me that it won't be for another week that we can..." She stopped there, biting her lip. Her XO frowned some more.

"I thought the sooner you closed the tunnel, the better," he objected.

"Yeah," Beka admitted.

"But?"

"But we're not quite ready to do so, yet."

"Harper still doing some fine tuning to the grav-converter?" he offered.

"Precisely," she gratefully took the straw.

"Bullshit. I'm just coming from him. Before coming up with the more exciting news, he told me that everything's in tip-top shape and ready to go for the trip you're gonna take all together, _Maru_-crew only and old times and all that stuff..."

The captain angrily pressed her lips together, but refrained from answering.

"Why was Jonah Draeger sent over to us from Tarn-Vedra?" he finally asked into the silence.

"We might need him."

"For what?"

She didn't answer immediately, obviously searching for words, looking for the best way to bring it to him as smoothly as possible that... That what?

"Beka? What do you think you might need him for? Can he help with opening the tunnel?"

Her face held the answer.

"What then? Destroying it?"

"No."

"Then what?" he exclaimed, frustrated.

She drew a deep breath.

"We have to destroy the tunnel – and destroy it soon. That would leave..." Beka seemed to stumble over her own tongue, but then she bit down hard on her teeth and plunged forward. "It would leave Ral Parthia cut off for good."

"Of course. I thought this was the plan."

"It is. But... but there might be another way to reach it."

"What other way?"

"I don't know. That's what Harper and Trance are trying to find out, using the slipstream-scout. They will however need about one week more until they've figured it all out."

He stared at her in silence, his eyes trying to force her to meet his gaze, but she kept resisting, looking everywhere but at him.

"And then what?" he at long last wanted to know. "If they can find another way – and mind you, that's a big 'if' – chances are it will be one more trip through hell like that crazy attempt you once mounted to get Dylan back home. I read the log-files, Beka..."

She interrupted, snorting at him.

"Of course you have, Academy-boy. Would be the first time one of you doesn't do his homework."

"Don't mock me!" Rhade growled. Beka bit her lip, then nodded.

"Sorry."

"Anyway," he sighed, "if you find another route to it, don't you think that whatever the Dragans have there in store could get here by simply following in your trace?"

"They won't."

"How do you know that?"

"I can make sure of that."

"How?"

"By blocking their path to here."

"Then why try to reach them in the first place?"

Again, she didn't answer. But this time she no longer tried to avoid his eyes. Seeing her expression, Rhade blew his cheeks up.

"Dylan? Are you serious? Have you lost your mind? You want to fly through whatever maze Harper and Trance come up with, sneak your way through their defences, find Dylan, get him out of there and then fly back with him, at one point or other making Trance once more create some... impenetrable obstacle blocking the new way effectively? You have got to be kidding!"

"I thought you had no intention of shouting..."

"Well, that was before I knew that you have gone stir-crazy... Beka, you heard what Trance said: there is no way she or Rommie or anyone can save Dylan. You'd be getting him back in a stasis-chamber, in which he has to remain for as long as the damned thing's working, because if you take him out of stasis he would... bleed to death within hours. For all our sophistication, there is nothing anyone can do to help him."

"Yes, exactly. It is our sophistication, Rhade, that makes it impossible for us to help him. No MIC, no nanos, no gadgets, no nothing... But that doesn't mean that someone with more experience in doing it the old-fashioned way..."

"The old-fashioned way? Beka, this is insane. It would be like asking someone used to build houses with the help of computers to do it without even having a wheel at his disposal..."

"They built pyramids before inventing the wheel..."

"Yes, Beka. Out of stone, not living tissue. But in this case we are talking about taking insane risks to bring a man who is, for all we know, past saving, back to us so we may bet on a long-shot that there might be someone still backward enough to have ever done this type of surgery... Dammit, not even Cascada's THAT backward."

"No, but Seefra was. Jonah Draeger... he told me he's been a doctor there, originally. He might have done this sort of thing... I know he saved himself..."

"Done what? Replace irreparably ruptured vessels with ones taken out from another part of one's body, all of this while having the patient sedated under the most primitive of circumstances that, even if surgery is successful, might prevent him from waking up ever again? Pumping insane amounts of blood, _natural_ blood, into him while doing so to replace what's been lost and hoping that he won't start haemorrhaging internally in other parts? Trying to..."

"I get the picture, Rhade."

"Do you really? Beka, this plan of yours – from start to finish, it is nothing more than a long chain of "if"-s, each one of them playing against all odds, risking too much for... for what? You have a war with the Dragans on your hands that you **must** win, you have to make sure that the Commonwealth survives and grows strong, stays safe, as the Matriarch you have the chance to bring all Nietzscheans finally to the point where they can outgrow their limitations and see reason."

"I intend to win the war – and I'm sure that even if I fail, you will succeed in my place. The Commonwealth... yes, I want it strong and safe and secure, but all of this can't depend on me only, just as it couldn't depend but on Dylan. If it is to survive, each one of us must be replaceable in it. As to the Nietzscheans, Rhade: it may pain you to hear this, but the right path for them is there for them to follow, has been there always, and it's been shown to them often enough. It is only that they have to make their own choices to follow it if they are to stick to it. If not, then no matter who forces them on it by exerting authority: sooner or later they will rebel once more against it..."

"That might be so. Still, Beka: the greater good..."

Her hand came down hard on the table in front of her.

"Dammit, Rhade! Can you really not understand that each one of us... we **all** have something in our lives that reaches beyond the 'greater good'?"

"And in your case that's Dylan?"

She stared at him sternly, unwavering, but not answering, either. At long last, she sighed.

"I spent six years putting him before... everything I treasured most before we met: my ways and view on life, my ship, my crew, my family... even my independence and freedom. The times I tried to break free... Did you like the results, Rhade?"

"You mean Seefra?"

"I mean Seefra, too. And now. And Tyr..."

"Tyr? It was not just a scheme to lure him in? You really thought about..." He swallowed, not even sure how to word this.

"About what you thought that I was thinking of? Well, I was... considering it..."

The Nietzschean shook his head.

"Dylan was so sure that you wouldn't betray him."

"No, I don't think so. He wasn't... sure. He was desperate, and so he hoped it – and clung to this hope with all might, risking it all just so it may come true..."

"And that was what tipped the balance in his favour?"

"That – and Tyr sentencing Dylan to death. All the time when I was weighing one offer against the other, I kept hoping that Tyr might... see some way other than killing him, that what we once used to have all together would weigh more. But it didn't..." She looked at him, her expression more frank, more open than he had seen it in a long time.

"_And Dylan? What about Dylan?"_

"_He dies."_

She remembered, the answer, the tone of Tyr's voice uttering it, the finality of it – and how she'd felt hearing the words, remembered herself suddenly knowing that she wouldn't, **couldn't** let this happen, no matter what Tyr had to offer, no matter how large the gaps between Dylan and her were already. Knowing that Dylan's death could only happen over her own dead body. By so much as revealing his intentions in this respect, Tyr had signed his own death-sentence. And if this applied to the Kodiak, whom she had accepted, loved, regarded as friend... How much more did it apply to whomever else was out there in the universe, attempting to get Dylan... She let Rhade see it all on her face. He searched her eyes for more answers, some other hidden reasoning, but he found none. In the end he shrugged:

"So that's it? You risk it all?"

"That's it."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm not. I'm not crazy, you know..."

"I wonder..." And then, in a last attempt of which he knew it would be futile: "Beka! I understand that Dylan has been part of your life, maybe THE most important part of your life, that you've been part of his, that the two of you belonged together, but... People have loved and been loved and lost the ones they loved and learned to live with it... That's no reason to throw it all away."

"That's not what you were thinking on Seefra..."

"I... wasn't thinking straight on Seefra."

"Don't fool yourself, Rhade. Whether you were thinking straight or not, is not the issue."

"So what is?"

"Whether you could have helped it..."

"I could, eventually."

"Yes, because we were all there to catch you up."

"We're all here for you now..."

The woman shut her eyes, shaking her head in silence.

"Dylan was there to catch you up, before any of us did, Rhade. He isn't here now."

"No, but all doesn't have to begin and end with Dylan. The universe isn't about him..."

"Mine is."

"Yes, because you want it to be, choose for it to be so. Choose differently."

"I can't."

"You can't or you won't? Beka, let go... Let go of him. What he was, what he represented... it can still belong to you, it will stay with you forever. But he doesn't have to... _own_ you."

She smiled sadly and shook her head once more.

"He does. As a child, I read a phrase in an old book: 'You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.' He tamed me, Rhade. And I'm pretty sure that I tamed him, too. We own each other."


	67. Chapter 66

**Chapter 66**

At first, it seemed that the time Harper still needed to fix everything to his captain's wishes would never come to an end. In fact, it felt to Beka as if those were the longest three weeks of her entire life. By consequence, they turned to be pretty much the longest weeks in the lives of everyone else onboard, too. Much like a race-horse kept for too long in the start-box, it was by the day more and more difficult for her and others to restrain her impatience and eagerness to finally have the go from the engineer.

It didn't help the the Terran with his task. It didn't help Rhade with working through the strategy for the plan as it stood with her, a plan that he still thought nuts, although he was now refraining from debating with her on the matter. It didn't help with the maneuvers both the Nietzschean and _Andromeda_ insisted on performing together with the one half of the Sabra-Jaguar fleet that was to stay behind and strengthen their ranks in sealing Illion off. And it certainly didn't help to smoothen the already strained relationships she had with everyone else who was to accompany her, first and foremost Trance.

But then, all of a sudden, word came from Harper that all was set to go – and from then on things seemed to rush past everyone, including Beka, as if someone had pressed the fast forward button on their lives.

With the _Eureka Maru_ already dispatched with Doyle to Crimeea and the _Andromeda Ascendant_ meant to stay back with Rhade at Illion, it had been decided that the commodore of the joint fleets would take command of the _Pride of Lepanto_, the Sabra-Jaguar flag ship of the Siege Perilous class, that had been lavishly modified to suit Elsbett Mossadim Bolivar's demands in terms of personal comfort. Other than that though (and the fact that it had an all-Nietzschean crew), it came close enough to any regular High Guard ship Beka had ever set a foot on. Still, looking around the pompous decorum of the captain's quarters, she couldn't quite suppress a frown.

"Not to your liking?" Elsbett wanted to know, a mock undertone distinct in her voice as the 'grand tour' of the ship that the Sabra was giving the human female was coming to an end.

"Tell me," Beka ventured, cautiously formulating her thoughts, "all this… splendor… Exactly why do you and Charlemagne need it? I mean, not all prides display such… extravagant tastes."

"No," the tall, dark woman conceded. "Just us and the Drago-Khatzov."

"Why?"

"Well, as far as the Sabras are concerned, it is… an acquired taste, brought about by the union with the Jaguar pride."

"I see."

"Do you really, Captain Valentine?"

Beka frowned some more, but didn't look up to meet Elsbett's eyes, her gaze trailing her finger, that was stroking up and down a massive, golden frame around some extremely elaborate and very colorful painting of some Venceremos-landscape.

"Pretty, isn't it?" the archduchess inquired, still mocking. "And very expensive, too…"

Beka lifted her eyes.

"I'm impressed," she muttered, her tone clearly indicating that she was anything but.

"No, you're not. You're wondering. And you still fail to see the connection between all this…" Elsbett chuckled, then continued: "…_splendor_, as you called it, and the fact that Dragans and Sabra-Jaguar are the universe's most deadly, strongest prides."

"What? Are you implying that there is a connection between your exaggeration in taste and your power?"

Bolivar's wife looked at her like the proverbial cat playing with a mouse.

"Yes," she purred, "when I first came in touch with it on Venceremos, I couldn't believe it myself, but… there you go: as Nietzschean prides go, both we and the Dragans spend a lot less time locked down in intrigues, conspiracies and internal wars – thus being able to concentrate more on devouring the enemy instead of each other."

Still incredulous, Beka rose her eyebrows.

"Charlemagne sets the pace," Elsbett elaborated. "And everyone around him strives to equal his life-style. Ceremonies, weddings, mating rituals, balls, feasts, expensive jewelry and clothes, extravagant gambling and betting, hunting parties, sumptuous palaces and gardens… It costs money and time and a lot of energy to keep up the standard to match us, who finance all of our luxuries – and a strong force to guard us – through the taxes paid by… the same people competing with us on their own fortunes. Energy that would otherwise be employed to struggle for power…"

A smile on her lips, Beka looked around with fresh eyes, slightly shaking her head.

"Okay, **now** I'm impressed. Who would have thought that this is all nothing but an elaborate attempt to solidify the control you have on your subjects? It seems that some of this genetic Nietzschean improvement includes the brains, after all."

Elsbett had to laugh up.

"Not really. It was an old Earth-trick. After seeing the various fractions competing for power and plunging the country into decades of civil war, it was Louis XIV., who first came up with that policy: money spent on boot heels covered in diamond splinters isn't around anymore to pay for weapons."

"Good, old Louis," Beka muttered. "In that case, Elsbett, let's see to it that the small flaws in your tactics - like Dragans mending with your... loyal subjects and the like - get solved. _Vivent le roi et la reine_! Or, in our situation, the archduke and archduchess," she added with a smile and a small reverence accompanied by a waving gesture of her hand, reminding of old courtier-customs.

"Well, according to Charlemagne and from what I've seen in the past coming from you, that's up to the Matriarch from now on," the Sabra answered.

"I'll do my best – as long as you play along, do exactly what Rhade says and keep a close eye on the Dragans."

"I will. Don't screw up," Bolivar's wife motioned, turning around to leave.

"Don't break my ship. Or my fleet. Or Rhade," Beka called after her while the doors were already closing on the tall figure. Then, with another look around: "Home, sweet home… Ship!"

The hologram of an impressive, dark-haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed Nietzschean alpha-female flickered in front of her.

"Commodore!"

"Captain or Beka will do, thank you. What's your name?"

"They call me Penthesilea."

"Yes, they would, wouldn't they?" Beka asked dreamily, sounding as if she were talking to herself. "All right then," she added louder, "Penny, then.."

"I prefer…"

"I don't care what you prefer… I'm not about to yell ridiculously long names while stuck in a battle situation."

"My Nietzschean captains do," the ship's persona replied stubbornly.

"Your Nietzschean captains haven't won a fight against me and my captain in seven years… What does that tell you?" There was no answer. "Exactly," Beka concluded. "Now, after this bumpy start, I hope we'll get on nicely. Has the archduchess disembarked?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Okay. Is everything and everyone onboard?"

"Good. Please ask lieutenant commanders Harper and Gemini to meet me in the briefing room in one hour. In the meantime confer all senior crew to Command."

"But not commanders Harper and Gemini?"

Beka's eyes narrowed to slits as she watched her new ship's image, who was looking at her with an innocent, debonair expression. A small grin began to spread slowly on the woman's lips. A Nietzschean ship with a sense of humor… Maybe this would turn out to be an interesting experience, after all.

"You're right, Penny. Have Harper and Trance be there, too."

"Pep-talk?"

"Pep-talk," Beka confirmed. "Dismissed."

* * *

Command resembled eerily the bridge of the _Andromeda Ascendant_. Had it not been for the Nietzschean, mostly male figures surrounding the three of them and the different face on the monitors, Beka would have thought to still be at home. To her surprise, they had listened to her outline their situation, the broad guidelines of their mission and the brief, but clear orders about how she expected things to be run both on the ship as well as within their reduced fleet, in silence, but not displaying any kind of uneasiness, discomfort, anger or annoyance about the humans' positions. Still, she wanted to make sure:

"Does anyone have any problems with that? If so, speak up and I will have you transferred to one of the ships hat will stay back under Commander Rhade's command."

No-one spoke up.

"No? Really, no-one?"

A broad-shouldered, square-chinned blond man with dark-brown skin and disconcertingly green eyes and red hair stepped forward:

"Commander Manfred Seke Sese, out of Alisha by Bokassa. I'm your XO." He motioned to an Indian looking woman at his right: "This is Lieutenant Daksinakali Montespan, out of Lucretia by Rustem, the squadron leader of your Garuda-fighters."

"Pleased to meet you both" the blonde offered.

"Really? With **that** names?" Harper hissed lowly next to her. Hoping that it had been quiet enough even for Nietzschean ears, Beka moved one step away from him and closer to her new first officer.

"Manfred, call me Beka… So: there really is no-one who would object to receiving orders from a kludge?"

"We were all at Kulich, Captain. And… we know who you are."

Beka smiled.

"Go figure! Reverent, grateful Nietzscheans!" the irrepressible Harper said with a side-look at Trance, who merely rolled her eyes at him. But the Earther couldn't be stopped. "I wasn't at Kulich. So:" he asked aloud, his voice challenging, "will you do what I say, too?"

The Nietzschean mustered him coolly, but with something like amusement gleaming somewhere in his eyes.

"Provided you say the same things as the Matriarch," he replied, adding after a small hesitation, "…Sir."

"Don't call me 'Sir'," the engineer ordered him.

"Very well, Ma'am."

Next to him, Trance couldn't help herself and burst out in laughter. A smile twisting the corner of her lips, as well, Beka decided to take the rest in a stride. Divine, it wasn't just a ship, but all of them obviously. She couldn't refrain from asking, hoping to God she didn't sound too incredulous:

"Are you all Sabra-Jaguar?"

"Actually, Captain, we're only Jaguar pride..."

That made more sense to Beka: obviously, they took example not just at Charlemagne's lavish life-style. His sense of humor must have rubbed off, as well.

"Okay, everyone. If you're all really comfortable with the way things are: let's bring it! Everyone at their stations. Penny, give me ship-wide and open communication to all other ships. It would be rude to let Crimeea and the darling Dragans in suspense for much longer. We're moving out!"


	68. Chapter 67

Someone mentioned waiting for space battles. Okay: one space battle coming up...

**Chapter 67**

It was hell let loose.

They had chosen their exit point in respectful distance of the Crimeea system, just outside the Volturia asteroid belt, since Beka intended to approach it with caution, hail Doyle, and give herself and the fleet time enough to assess and adjust to the situation.

However, it became clear within seconds that the situation was not to be adjusted to, but escaped from. The instant they left the slipstream, they found themselves amidst myriads of Garuda-fighters, who didn't seem half as surprised as they were, seeing as they began immediately to take them under heavy fire, while chunks of rocks from the asteroid belt were also pounding at them.

A mess. A huge mess, but… But at least, it helped tremendously with getting Beka instantaneously out of whatever stunned sensation she might have experience upon fist setting eyes on the place.

"Full screen!" she shouted, as her mighty vessel began to shake under the pounding of missiles against its exterior, sparkles and smoke bursting from everywhere as more and more hits came through.

"All hands battle stations! Penny, hail the fleet, evasive maneuvers everyone" she yelled, while getting herself already started on just about **every **evasive maneuver she had ever heard of. "Manfred, tell'm all to move the slip-fighter squadrons out there and have them go hunting! Weapon stations – load missiles. Everyone: just blast everything away that looks likely to hurt us! Trance: send a message to Doyle. Ask her what the hell is going on here!"

"But..." her first officer tried to object.

"I know, by the time she answers, we'll all be probably part of some glorious historical report, still: Trance, do it regardless. All stations: damage report! Harper, how are we doing? Can you get your butt up here? We might need it!"

"We're getting by, Boss! Coming..."

With pleasure, she noted that the Nietzscheans all around her had actually started following her orders almost before she had issued them. There were times when she just loved those survival instincts. All ships and crews were loading and firing salvo after salvo, doing a fine job at taking out as many fighters as possible, along with whatever debris, asteroids big or small or whatever else was thrown at them or happened to come close. Unfortunately, it didn't seem enough. The whole fleet was rocking under the much too rapid fire and beating they were taking.

"Beka…" Bursting through the doors to Command, Harper saw himself thrown off his feet and sliding into a wall, while at one weapons' console a Nietzschean officer also lost her footing. With the agility of a rubber ball, the Terran regained his balance. The blonde lieutenant seemed less lucky.

"Trance!" Beka snapped. "Take care of her. Have you sent the message to Doyle?"

"Aye!"

"Good. Then go, take her to med deck. Harper, man the station. Reload and blast'm away!"

"Reloading and blasting, Boss!" the engineer obliged, arming missiles and taking aim at an approaching squad of Garudas.

He was doing his best. They all were, but the ship still got jolted by hits from the fighters.

"There are so many of them!" Seke Sese muttered as he returned fire with a fast battery of close-range missiles and defensive mines.

"Yes!" both he and Harper exclaimed, as several of the enemy vessels exploded on-screen, but then prepared for another attack that was coming at them.

"Beka… Bekaaa!" the Terran shouted. "Just look at that! We shouldn't… We really, **really **shouldn't be here any longer! There're millions of'm!"

He was right. Maybe not with the millions, but… there sure were enough Dragans to keep them occupied well into next year, Beka realized. Or life. No matter how many the Sabra-Jaguar ships shot down, still more were coming at them.

With customary ease, Beka took firmly hold of the navigation controls, letting the feel of it almost merge with her breathing, her body as such, allowing for the ship to become more like an extension of herself rather than a separate tool at her disposal.

The _Pride of Lepanto_ responded with graceful speed to her tiniest impulses and to a degree it seemed as if ship and woman had become one, maneuvering and sliding through the battle raging around them with something that almost resembled anticipation. Beka concentrated, multitasking along with the vessel, trying to process all information she received on both the ship and the fleet, controlling the real-time positions of the Garudas and slip-fighters surrounding them and issuing short, precise orders.

Still, the swarms of Dragans just kept coming at them – and three Sabra Jaguar ships weren't just as lucky as the _Pride_. Insisting on blasting themselves a path through the attack waves, Beka ordered all ships to scan for escape pods from the destroyed vessels.

"We can't fight and rescue!" her second-in-command objected.

"Which is why we don't fight. We get our survivors and run."

"But…"

"No buts, Mr. Seke Sese. Penny, hail everyone and tell them that we're locking navigation controls to you. More precisely: to me."

The Nietzschean XO turned around.

"What? Why?"

"Because we open a portal, escape to slipstream and then exit the fleet anew directly at Crimeea."

"That's insane. That whole damned system is unstable," Harper objected.

"Yes, I know. Like Kulich. Do it, Penny!" his captain retorted with a bright – and slightly crazy grin, her Sabra-Jaguar second-in-command thought, as a fighter slipped past the man's constant fire and under Harper's guard, landing a hit and having sparkles flaring up on Command. The Earther swore and banged his fist on his console.

"Dammit, Harper, would you just not argue with her when there are Drago-Khatzov shooting at us?" he yelled, admonishing himself. Seke Sese gave him an annoyed look that clearly indicated the Nietzschean to be harboring serious doubts about the mental condition of all the kludges he had been forced to accept working with, seemingly refraining from any further comments, though. But then he opened his mouth…

"Captain," the ship's somewhat preciously accented voice cut short any other exchange that might have ensued, "all navigation controls have been locked to you. All ships are lined-up in formation."

"I bet that was the last thing they said to Villeneuve before Trafalgar, too," Harper gloomily muttered, thoroughly ignored by Beka.

"Very well. Penny, give me ship-wide and pass on the message: everyone brace for slipstream. Open a portal!"

The effervescent white disk glowed up and threw out its tentacles, grabbing for them. The _Pride of Lepanto_, followed by her sister ships, plunged into the intricate patterns of merging galaxies.

Concentrating, Beka blocked out all other thoughts than those related to her intended destination. It looked as if she was melting with both the ship's helm and the strings outside it. One could not have said whether it was her offering or accepting suggestions from the stream.

Still: it was a ride through hell, this too. The ships had all taken more or less severe beatings and while one or other repeatedly slammed against the dendrite-like silver tubes, Beka began to silently pray to everything she's ever heard of that the decision point would show up before one of them broke apart and ripped them all to pieces. On all ships, all crew held on for dear life to whatever was within their reach.

And then, with a jolt they all felt themselves propelled forward – and they were out and back to normal space. Amidst firing vessels and Garuda-fighters.

"What the hell…" Harper cursed.

"Crimeea. The Commonwealth-fleet. They also have engaged the enemy. And they are winning!" Penthesilea announced in a triumphant voice. "Captain, we're being hailed!"

"_Pride of Lepanto_, this is the _Eureka Maru_," a most welcome, familiar voice greeted them.

"Doyle, love of my life!" _Andromeda_'s engineer rejoiced. "How's my favorite girl?"

"On-screen," Beka ordered Penthesilea into his cheering – and, with a grin at Harper: "Don't ever let Rommie hear that, Seamus!" But then all thoughts at joking fled her, as she stared mouth agape at the monitors, where she saw her old, beloved rust-bucket approaching at high speed, dispatching enemies and at the same time flying with an elegance she never would have thought the freighter capable of.

"Wow," she mumbled, floored by the splendid sight on the huge screens, thinking: _Harper, Harper, Harper... What have you **now **done with my ship?_

"Captain," the image of the Nietzschean flag-ship told her, "the Commonwealth fleet reports all enemy vessels destroyed. The _Eureka Maru_ is requesting permission to land." … "Captain?"

"Eh, what? Oh yes, permission granted. Escort Captain Doyle to the briefing room. Manfred, you have Command. Harper, you're with me."


	69. Chapter 68

**Chapter 68**

They were speeding down the corridors of the still a little unfamiliar Nietzschean war-ship, but after two inquiries for direction and a couple of wrong turns, they arrived at the hangar-deck that was meanwhile safely harboring the _Eureka Maru_. Beka's eyes lit up at the sight of her beloved ship, but it was nothing compared to the leap of joy Harper took towards Doyle.

Smiling, Beka stood back, contemplating Harper literally throwing himself at the blonde android, taking her in his arms and swirling her around. Unlike Rommie, who would have withstood his attempts to lift her off her feet, Doyle let it happen, her smile maybe a little more indulgent and not quite as insane as his, but still beaming and warm enough to make the captain feel a bit like someone intruding upon a rather intimate scene.

She waited for a while, but when it became obvious that the engineer had no intention of letting go of his friend anytime soon, Beka cleared her throat. Immediately sobered, both the avatar and the Terran turned around grinning, although Harper kept his arm solidly around the petite blonde's shoulders. It took Doyle an energetic shake to shrug him off before she came towards Beka.

"Captain..." she began in her familiar, somewhat husky voice.

Warningly, Beka lifted a warning left index, while her right hand stretched out in greeting.

"Don't you dare saluting, okay?"

Taking the offered hand, the Seefraine smiled.

"Hey, Beka! It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you, too, Doyle. In fact, it's more than good, it's great. What you just did... I mean, the way you handled yourself and the _Maru_ out there..."

She came to a halt, stopped short by Harper's grin.

"Geez, Boss... Never thought I'd hear you babbling."

Beka Valentine had to grin back at that.

"Well, color me..."

"Surprised?" Doyle inserted, with an equally broad smile.

"Actually, it's more like awed. I never saw anyone fly like you just did. I mean, it was..."

"Better than you thought?" Harper tried to help out. His captain shook her head.

"No," she said, "it was... better than I could."

A proud little smile appeared on Doyle's lips, with a matching expression doubling it on Harper's. Beka didn't miss it.

"Okay," she sighed, "spit it out, you two: Doyle, you were superb out there, better than me, better than Rommie, better than I've ever seen anyone handle the _Maru_ in battle. So, Harper, tell me – what did the both of you do to my ship?"

The diminutive blonde shrugged.

"I still couldn't handle her in slipstream..."

"Doyle," Beka interrupted, "I am certainly not complaining, I just want to know. You see, I do realize that your reflexes are superior to mine by far, but so are Rommie's and yet, the maneuvers you just did... I've seen her often enough with the _Maru_ and she couldn't have done that, either. Granted, she can, of course, handle the _And_..." Her voice died down as her eyes widened. Under her incredulous gaze darting back and forth between the android and man in front of her, both of them displayed an uncomfortable, slightly apologetic expression of sorts.

"Boss," the engineer began in that characteristic, somewhat plaintive tone that indicated a lengthy, convoluted explanation into his motives to have done – yet again – something behind his superiors' back coming up, "look: you sent her and the _Eureka Maru_ out on something pretty close to a suicide mission. I... I had to do something to at least try to even the odds... "

Beka's unbelieving eyes grew even wider at that, then turned to Doyle.

"And... and you agreed to that?" she stammered.

The android shrugged, but the gesture was lacking her usual delicate casualness.

"Beka," Harper cut in, before his friend could answer the captain, "ships don't have avatars because they're fancy toys to have around. They're a vital, necessary, independent alter ego, most efficient because they can grasp and _sense_ what is most essential for both all kind of artificial intelligence and sentient beings. The best of two worlds, two dimensions, if you so wish. Without them, ships are not... incomplete, but they are not exhausting their potential, either. At Hephaestus... maybe Dylan's plan would have succeeded there, if _Andromeda_ would already have had Rommie to help them along. And on Seefra, no matter what we tried, she didn't become herself until Doyle gave her back Rommie. And... think of Hector, of Ryan, even of Gabriel..."

"Gabriel?" Beka echoed.

"Yes, Gabriel... Ultimately it was Gabriel trying to stand up against the _Balance of Judgment_ that helped us along."

The pilot shook her head.

"Harper, I'm not saying that you're not right. And I... I appreciate your dedication..." She hesitated, the sketched a gesture indicating that she included both of them in that. "Your both' dedication. But you should have told me..."

"Because the _Maru_ is your ship?" Doyle asked pointedly.

"No, Doyle. Because by letting Harper go through with it all, you've tied yourself to this ship, given up your freedom... And I do remember how much you've always been treasuring it from the day when you gave Rommie back her core memories and made yourself independent from the _Andromeda Ascendant_..."

The android looked at her with weighing, careful eyes.

"Are you saying that you object to it out of concern for me?"

"Would that be so hard to believe?" Beka asked back, with a small, knowing smile.

The weighing look persisted, deepening as Doyle tilted her head to one side, letting it almost rest on one of her shoulders. Then, straightening up, she nodded.

"Actually, it is, Beka, if only a bit. However, I am willing to believe it. So you want an explanation why I went along with Harper's plan and let him 'bind me' to the _Eureka Maru_? The easy answer would be that it made sense – and works... The less obvious one is that it gives me a purpose."

"Of course it works," the captain interrupted, "and yet: much as I love the _Maru_, she is by no means a High Guard ship of the line, let alone one of the modern Glorious Heritage class cruisers. If you wanted a ship, why didn't you ask for..."

"Another _Andromeda_? Because, although I was made to replace a High Guard avatar, I am not one of them. The _Eureka Maru_, with its more... civilian nature and history fits me better... But if you so much object to it, I'm sure Harper can undo it again..."

"No," Beka fenced her off, "no, that's not what I mean. If you're sure... I mean, really sure, Doyle, then: welcome aboard."

She stuck out her hand again and Doyle took and shook it a warm, tight grip. They both cleared their throats.

"Right," the avatar of the _Eureka Maru_ then said, "I'll go have a look at this Nietzschean marvel and familiarize myself with it and the 'enhancements' of our fleet. When do you want us to meet and where?"

"In an hour, med-deck. We have to explain a few things, then I have to tell you all what we'll do."

"All right. See you in an hour."

Both the android and the man turned to leave, but at the last moment Beka held Harper back.

"Just a moment, Seamus. I'd like one more word with you, please..."

The young man sighed, letting his head drop to his chest. It would have been too easy... With a sympathetic look at him, Doyle took off with a nod. His hands up in defense, Harper turned around.

"Look, Boss, I know what you want to say..."

"No, you don't. I want to say two things. First off: thank you."

"For giving the _Eureka Maru_ Doyle as an avatar? You're welcome. And secondly?"

"A question: are you really sure?"

"About Doyle and the _Maru_? It's not my place to decide that. It's hers..."

"I know, and that's exactly what I don't understand. I remember exactly how hurt and mad and disappointed she was when she found out what you had done to her for _Andromeda_'s sake..."

"Yes, but this time it wasn't my idea." The short man ran his fingers through his hair. "Look, Beka: she **is **an avatar. Like I said – they're not just fancy toys. They have a purpose, from the very first moment of their lives they are tied to this purpose... One Doyle lost when she gave it all back to Rommie."

"Yes, but... she still has Tarn-Vedra..."

"Tarn-Vedra isn't Seefra. It's... Seefra in different and changing, and just like it never could become the home he lost to Dylan, nor the home he knew to Jonah, it is no longer the place she knew and loved to Doyle. Besides: rebuilding a planet isn't what she was meant for."

"And running a battered freighter is?"

Harper sighed.

"You told her you understand."

"Yes, because insisting that I don't, would have made her feel unwanted, which she really isn't. But that's not my point. She was free... FREE, Harper! And now she no longer is."

He threw her a long, pensive look.

"You mean... free like you were once?"

Beka's eyes narrowed.

"Once? What do you mean? I still am free to go, just like I've always been..."

"Really? You mean you could leave here anytime?"

"Well, yes... I always could..."

"Is that so, Beka? And over the past six years, how often have you done it? And when you did, how long have you managed to really stay away? Other than that one time when you had succeeded in convincing yourself that Dylan no longer wanted you around? Hmm? That freedom, that you and I have for so long sported like some sort of fighting colors... Let's be honest, shall we? When given the chance, we had nothing more urgent to do than to shed it like an old, useless skin and embrace the purpose Dylan was offering us..."

"That's different..."

"Why? Because we're humans and she is an AI?"

"No. Because we did it not only for a purpose, but also for... Dylan."

"Wrong, Beka. **You** did it for Dylan. I did it for me and all like me, to whom this universe was denying a chance. And then I did it for Rommie. And now I do it for Doyle."

Her eyes searching his, Beka remembered her own words to Rhade: _Can you really not understand that each one of us... we __**all**__ have something in our lives that reaches beyond the 'greater good'? _

"And Doyle does it for...?" she ventured at long last.

"Me," Harper answered without hesitation. "She wants to win this fight for me. And keep me safe. And keep you safe, for me – that too. And get Dylan back. I think, you set aside, there's no-one else who wants him back more than she does, not even Rommie..."

"Why?"

"She was on Myrmidon. She's seen you and him there... What... what they did to you both... And... She's that last one to have seen him alive."

"I... I never considered that... What it must have done to her to... see what they did to Dylan..."

"None of you considered that."

"But you have."

Harper shrugged.

"I understand her better than anyone else does. I KNOW her. You see, she had a purpose from the very beginning. Her... purpose, beside being a... vessel for what was left of the _Andromeda_, was to protect... me... and others she felt attached to. The ones, who need protection."

For a brief moment, Beka and Harper locked eyes once more, but then he turned away his gaze.

"Is there anything else?"

Still looking at him, the woman nodded slowly.

"Just one more thing, Harper: we're going into battle..."

Surprised, he looked back at her.

"I know that. So what?"

"So tell her..."

His eyes widened.

"What?"

"What you just told me."

"I... I don't know what you mean..."

"Yes, you do. She means a lot to you, in more than just one way. Tell her - and tell her now. Because in battle there's nothing that can't happen, no matter how much we think we might have thought it through. Should something happen to you... Believe me, you don't want to die with the regret of not having told her. Should something happen to her... You wouldn't be able to live with yourself, either. Tell her, for your own sake, if not for hers... Whatever happens, you might come to need the knowledge that in the end you've told her. Believe me, you are so much more fragile than she is."

"Because I'm human?"

"Because you're a man. And there are certain things you can neither die in peace nor live with. Tell her, Harper..." she urged him a last time.

The man nodded and turned around to leave. At the doors, he hesitated briefly.

"Is that... is that why you insist on going after Dylan? To give him a chance to tell you what he couldn't so he can... die in peace if we can't save him?" he asked in a coarse voice, not facing Beka's eyes.

"Whatever his faults, Dylan in the end always managed to muster up the courage to say what needed to be said. So the answer is: no, it's got nothing to do with that. He... already told me all there was to tell."

The remark made Harper sharply turn his head and scrutinize her, surprised.

"He did? When?"

Beka smiled a small, sad smile...

"Ask Doyle. She knows."


	70. Chapter 69

**Chapter 69**

Although he hadn't asked Doyle for a word in private, Harper noticed that she remained seated after the briefing was over, her eyes silently following the other members of the senior staff as they were retreating from the room. At the doors, Beka Valentine hesitated an instant, throwing back a look into the space behind her, still semi-obscured from projections of the strategic holos. For a moment her eyes caught Harper's gaze, who nodded at her almost imperceptibly. Sketching something like the shadow of a smile, Beka nodded back and left.

"Harper…"

"Doyle…"

They both smiled, and the engineer shrugged.

"You first," he offered with unusual gallantry.

She looked away, then sighed.

"So you guys think the Nietzschean Charlemagne caught is telling the truth, yes? That Dylan's been kept all those past months on Ral Parthia, used as a… a living database and a lab rat, that Ral Parthia is caught in a pocket universe – just like Seefra was… And that due to all this Musseveni already had enough time to breed his new master-race, yes?"

The young man nodded.

"Pretty much, yes."

"And the plan is…?"

"The plan is to blast their transit way to us to hell, before they manage to control it."

"What makes you think they might be able to control it?"

"Remember when Musseveni told us on Seefra that he is a Routist? That he stole the secret of the Route of Ages from the Vedrans?"

"You believe that?"

"I've seen it happen: with the Derivas, with those androids set on war, who wanted you to join them on Seefra… I suspect that all of these… these freaky passages from one spot to another, all those greetings from hell that we couldn't explain like the Engine of Creation or the All-Forces Nullification Point or time tunnels we came across were nothing but variations of the damned thing – or of devices of it somehow gone wrong ," the engineer said with a sneer.

The blonde threw him a long, doubt-clouded look.

"So the fleet you brought with you is here just in case you can't blast it to hell?"

"We can blast it to hell," Harper shook his head with conviction. "The fleet is just here in case it opens before we are ready."

"I thought your super bombs are ready."

"Yes, but Beka isn't…"

Doyle frowned.

"That's a surprise," she admitted. "Last time I saw her, blasting everything Dragan to hell was the only thing she seemed ready for."

"She's got to make sure that the wormhole is destroyed no matter what, with or without her in charge. And she's got to make sure that there is someone in place to take over for her here. Rhade will show up as soon as he's got Illion secured and the other half of the Sabra-Jaguar fleet solidly under control and in place together with our people."

"Why does Rhade have to show up?"

She saw the Terran hesitating, and something like unease stirred in her guts. Or would have, if she'd had guts. Either way, she much suspected that it had to be something like what she experienced now, when organics mentioned something about "icy stomachs".

"Spit it out, Harper," she then urged him, her tone gentler than her words. "Why does Rhade have to show up?"

"We need someone capable and reliable in charge…"

"Because Beka and you and me and Trance aren't enough?"

Harper remained silent.

"Listen, Doyle…" he then began, but stopped anew. The weird sensation deep within Doyle's circuits intensified. Taking a deep breath, the man began to talk again, this time at high speed. "Doyle, I've been thinking… Maybe Beka was right with her objections to you being now the _Maru_'s avatar. I… I think maybe we should think again about it… I can undo it all…"

Delicate eyebrows rose, conveying the android's pretty face a startling likeness to the Cheshire cat – that for once clearly must had left its smile somewhere else.

"Oh? And how have you reached this amazing insight?" She sighed when he didn't answer. "Don't make me shake it out of you," she threatened playfully, her tone trying to mask her unease.

Harper loudly blew out his breath, then nodded as if encouraging himself to speak up.

"When the tunnel opens, we need the fleet to buy us enough time. Once we're gone – and _only _after we're gone – the Rosies should be fired to make it collapse."

She stared at him wide-eyed.

"Gone?" the blonde finally echoed. "Gone where?"

"Well, into it…"

"Have you lost your mind?"

The young man shrugged.

"Probably," he admitted. "Listen, Doyle, it wasn't my idea. Beka…"

"Beka's been self-destructive since the first day I met her… Doesn't mean you have to become suicidal, too."

"I have no intention of…"

"Of course not!" she burst out. "No-one has an intention to be suicidal, no-one wants to die, but it's what you humans do regardless. You all fly off to accomplish some marvelously heroic things – and end up dead in the process, because somewhere along the way you mistake heroic with stupid. Why? Why, Harper? Why? What does Beka want in that damned wormhole or tunnel or… whatever it is? If she gets caught up in the explosion…"

"This is exactly why we need someone outstanding here, to buy us time to get away…"

"Away to where?"

"You know where…"

"Ral Parthia? She's going after Dylan? But, Harper… this is crazy. Even if they really kept him alive for all this time… It's not as if she can walk in there, get him out, take him out of stasis and everything will be peachy. Trance said it herself that he is probably past saving." She raked her fingers helplessly through her mane in an uncharacteristic gesture. "I saw him, Harper. I **saw **him on Myrmidon. He was on his last pair of legs when he flew away. They never would have cornered him back into Illion had it been any different. When he was shot down… You saw the vids yourself. Even if he was still alive – and it's a big if –, the shape he was in…" She shook her head, then walked over to him and grabbed him by his arms. "Seamus, Dylan is either dead or dying. You can't risk your life because Beka can't let go…"

"Supposed you're right," he murmured. "Supposed…"

She sneered.

"You don't mean to tell me that you're going along on this insane mission just so you can provide a shoulder to cry on for Beka if she doesn't find him, or can't find her way back and the worst possible – and most probable – scenario really occurs…"

"Beka not finding him or her way back isn't exactly the worst case scenario, Doyle," the young man murmured tiredly.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Enlighten me."

He jumped up from his seat and began to pace.

"On Seefra…" he began. "When you first met her, you… you hated Beka, didn't you?"

Doyle sighed.

"That wasn't Beka… You said she had been hurt, felt betrayed… When I asked you why you had ever bothered with someone like her in the first place, you said…"

"I know what I said, Doyle. I would have said anything, just so you don't think too badly of me for keeping company with…"

"You kept company with Marika," she interrupted him impatiently. "I always knew that you have a penchant for big, bad girls…"

"I don't 'have a penchant' for _anything _big and bad," the Terran shook his head. "I have a penchant for staying alive. I do what I must to ensure that…"

"And flying with Beka into that tunnel to rescue someone who's by now probably been dead all along fits that pattern how?" the blonde asked sarcastically.

He looked away, clearly searching for the right words to tell her – and knowing that he was failing this task miserably.

"Doyle," he tried then in an awkward, small voice, "you know that she can make it if someone just buys her time enough to do so."

"Okay, fine," she snapped. "Then let her do it, let her make it on her own. Let her take Trance… Let her take… I don't know… Dammit, Harper, I'm her ship's avatar, I'll go along with her, but you … stay here. Just **stay**!" Her tone became pleading towards the end.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I owe her."

"You owe her what, Harper? Your life? She owes you hers – many times over."

He swallowed.

"No, it's not just that. I owe her… **a** life, Doyle. She and I, we are both survivors, only… my life without her – before I joined the _Maru _or even on Seefra… It was just that: surviving. I didn't have a purpose, a task, not even rules… She took me in and turned me into a valuable person, someone with a value in and for himself, not just for the things he could do, more than just a pawn, a tool or a thing…"

She watched him, wide-eyed, opened her mouth to answer, but then her lips closed again and she just shook her head, diverting her eyes from him and towards the ceiling. Finally she sighed, looking back at him.

"Fine." Her voice was brittle. "Okay, have it your way. We're going with her…"

"Doyle, you're your own person, I can undo your links with the _Maru_, I once did even for Rommie, you don't have to join her."

"I'm not joining _her_, Harper. I am joining **you**."

He stared at her.

"Doyle…"

"Shut up," she ordered him curtly. "Shut the hell up, Seamus! Just once in your life, take it as it is and don't argue with me. If you have to go – and apparently you do – then I'm coming with you. If that's what you owe Beka, then I'm owing you this much, too. And I suspect that she is going after Dylan because she owes him the same… So by all means, let's play this insane game of…"

"Doyle," the Terran interrupted her. "Doyle, you don't owe me anything, but if you really want to come along, there's no-one I would rather have with me on this trip…"

She smiled. And then, to his surprise, she came over to him and hugged him, holding him tightly in an almost crushing embrace. They remained like that for a rather long time, until she finally drew herself a bit away from him, so that she could look at him.

"I'm right, yes?

"Aren't you always?" Harper answered her with a lopsided grin, but then became serious. "Right about what?"

"About Beka… and Dylan."

He loudly blew out his breath.

"I… I'm not quite sure. I mean… Well, there was always a responsible, reliable, sensible side to her. But… That Beka you first met on Seefra, the tough, mean, ruthless, Beka you thought she had changed into because of Arkology… She had not changed, but changed _back_. You see, that Beka **was **Beka all right. The other one you met later, the loyal, warm, caring one… That's someone that was brought out in the open by Dylan."

"How did he know it was all there in the first place?"

"He didn't. I spent three years with her without noticing it. I mean, I was her friend, yes. She, though, she was my captain, the boss, the master, never my friend - not really… This other side of her, I'm not even sure that it was there at all and not just something… some_one _Dylan invented – for his own sake. Because he needed somebody to fight off the loneliness he must have felt. Before Earth got blown out of the universe, I never really understood just how utterly alone Dylan must have felt, just how desperately he must have needed some other living, breathing person he could relate to and who could relate to him by his side, so he would not lose his mind right there and then…"

"Why her? Why not any other one of you?"

"Who? Tyr was a challenge from the very beginning – at best, if not a threat. Rev… Well, he's a Magog. For someone with Dylan's life experience trusting Rev was a big step. Trance was obviously a riddle, and I was just a kid, or according to him I was…."

"There was Rommie…"

"No, there was _Andromeda_. Rommie came later, through me, and only after he got more familiar with the concept as such of... of... people like you being… well, being just different kind of people..."

"I know…"

"No, you don't. You just know that there was no avatar before I built her, but it was more than that. He'd lived his whole life with all those neat hierarchies in his head, Vedrans, Nietzscheans, humans, Than, organic and not organic beings, clones and all this crap; he was the captain, she was his ship for the time being – and _only _for the time being… There wasn't much equal ground lost between them. The only one who somehow seemed fitting to meet him eye to eye was Beka. His equal on the opposite side, the noise to his silence, the black to his white, but his equal nonetheless. So from the very beginning Dylan clung to her, believed in Beka like there was no tomorrow. And I suspect without her there might not have been one, at least not for him. I remember him trusting her to not side with her brother mere months after we joined his crew. I remember Tyr mocking him for waiting for her when she was five days late at a rendezvous point, and Dylan stubbornly repeating that she had not walked out on him. I remember him trusting her time and time again with his ship, his dream of the Commonwealth, his principles, his ideals… It swept her right off her feet, the almost insane way he believed in her like no-one – at least no-one _we _could have imagined – had ever believed in anything in this universe of ours. And the amazing thing happened, she became everything he needed her to be. Only: without Dylan this Beka doesn't exist. Every time she thinks him lost the old Beka is back with a vengeance – literally, since his belief in her has next to the _Maru _turned Dylan into the one thing in her life that she deems worth keeping."

He stopped and drew in a deep breath.

"You were not quite wrong, Doyle. I have to go with her because there is indeed a worst case scenario: that she'll make it through to Ral Parthia, and – if Dylan is indeed past saving – claw her way back to here, if need be. And then not one Nietzschean, **not one**, will be safe from her. She'll start with the Dragans and go on with the rest…"

"She'll never wipe them all out."

"No, but she'll do her best. Her best is pretty good and she'll come a far way, but she won't be able the finish the job. And if that happens, I won't see peace again in my lifetime, maybe even you won't, either. If that really happens… someone has to be there to stop her."

"If, hm? Dylan is most likely dead, so…" She sighed, her eyes heavy: "The odds for it to happen are pretty high, Harper."

"I know." He took a further step back and cleared his throat. "Doyle, what I said about you not having to come with us… I really, really meant it."

There was a hurt look on her face, but she chased it away too quickly for him to be able to tell if he hadn't just imagined it.

"I know you meant it. Still, I'm coming with you," she replied, her tone stern. The man nodded, then lifted his hand and placed it on the side of her face, his thumb slowly stroking the prominent cheekbone.

"When all this is over, remind me to tell you something."

There was no mistake this time: the hurt look was back, in full force. She turned her face away from his touch.

"I don't think there is anything you have to tell me, not really. If there were, you'd tell me right now. Hell, Harper, if there was, you would have told me all along, no?" it furiously broke out from her. He stared at her, but eventually had to look away from the rage blazing at him from her eyes. She glared at him for one moment longer, then sneered almost and turned on her heels, heading towards the doors.

"Doyle!" It stopped her in her tracks, but she didn't come back. "Doyle, wait… It's not like this… I… I didn't know… I thought…" Aware that he was stammering like an idiot, he pressed his lips together, trying to compose himself. "Doyle, please," he then uttered, forcing his tone to calm down. "I'm sorry. I just didn't know if what I have to say to you is something you want to hear at all. Or at least from me, anyway."

She turned around and faced him.

"Bullshit. Before we made our last stand against the Abyss, I told you all you needed to know if I want to hear what you have to say. Dammit, I told them all, and each and every one understood what I was saying. Don't tell me that only you missed it…"

He looked at her, helpless, scared. At long last he shrugged and hung his head. She sighed, seemingly at a loss.

"Would it really kill you to tell me now?" the blonde finally asked. He muttered something. "What? What did you say, Harper?"

"I – said," he answered, this time scanting sharply and eyeing her almost defiantly, "that – it – just – might."

She nodded quietly.

"Fine. Tell you what: don't bother…"

"No, wait!"

"Wait for what? And for how long? Wait for you to muster up enough courage to tell me that you need me in your life? Wait for some Nietzscheans or Magog or Pyrians or whatever else there is out there to get you or me or both of us to finish the job, so that the one of us who gets out in one piece receives a letter, that says how much we meant to each other and that we are sorry? Well, guess what? Those letters, Harper, they don't mean shit, they don't change anything and they don't help one bit! Because you can't answer, Harper, no matter how much you wish you could… You just cannot answer. Go take a good look at Beka, because she _got _her letter. And she cannot answer, and it simply kills her. And, all nice psychological explanations set aside, this is the real reason why she's going after Dylan…"

He took the three steps separating him from her in a hurry and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Okay, fine!" he pressed out. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Doyle. I want you with me for the rest of my life, I need you by my side – and I… I…"

"You…?"

"I… want you to stay here because I couldn't live with myself were something to happen to you."

To his surprise he felt the so far rigid shoulders soften under his hands and then she smiled.

"I love you too, Harper," she told him softly. She came closer and for a brief second pressed herself against him, taking his hand. "Come on now, let's go help that crazy friend of yours."


	71. Chapter 70

A/N: Wow, that was quite the response. I thank you all for the feedback. To those I haven't replied: I am much afraid that some of you have not heard back from me, for the simple reason that I have here and there misplaced the e-mail addresses. However, I suspect that you'd rather have a new update, so here we go...

**Chapter 70**

He stared straight ahead into what seemed to look like the fangs of hell. Not that hell was not already all around him, despite the fact that all slip-fighter squadrons had received order to heavily cover him and his position, that was safely (if only just) out of reach from the gravitational pull of the tunnel into which the _Eureka Maru_ had disappeared ten standard minutes ago.

"Give me time to get far enough away…" had been Beka's last order (although it had sounded more like a plea) before the old freighter's doors had slammed shut, taking away with it his old captain, his best friend, a couple of men he detested to various degrees for various reasons… and the love of life, as he had been forced to finally admit to himself… and her.

_Enough time… How much time is enough time to escape certain death? _Harper mused. More precisely: how much time was enough when it came to flying through a gateway to places nobody **really **wanted to go to?

The opening right in front of him showed nothing of the familiar pool with silvery, flashing tendrils slipstream portals displayed. However, it was also nothing like the blue or red cubes marking the Route of Ages openings that had led them to Seefra or on Beka's trail when she had, back in the day, been taken from them by Tyr. Nor did it have any similarities with the circling passage that had almost engulfed them during the Derivas' attacks. In fact, it looked like… nothing: a spot somehow darker than the darkness of the universe. In it, an enormous gravitation source – or so the sensors said. Periodically, some sort of fluctuation could be detected; then ships plopped out like bubbles of air on a water surface, heavy, bulky, ugly middle-sized carriers, that began spewing seemingly countless numbers of slip-fighters and Garudas at them with amazing speed.

Behind him, Crimeea with its crazy stars pulling at each other and the planets, satellites and asteroids trapped within their gravitation fields, celestial bodies that looked all as if some mad giant was chewing on them regularly and spitting them out again, was ablaze with explosions caused by the Commonwealth fleet trying to terminate as many of the Dragan fighters as were coming at them.

Considering the agility and accuracy of the enemy, this would not have an easy task either way. It was almost impossible with so many of the Commonwealth slip-fighters out there with him though, half of them hiding him and the fleet of supply pods all locked to his controls and waiting to be set loose into the wormhole, where the Rosies they carried were supposed to destroy the damned thing while the other pilots were doing their best to create as much chaos and confusion as possible, hoping thus to deflect all Dragans' attention from the vessels in waiting.

The intensity of the Crimean explosions reminded Harper that every second he spent waiting was costing lives. Still: he hesitated, every second passing increasing the _Maru _crew's chances of survival. Theoretically.

Practically, though… he had no idea. No-one had one, no-one could really tell. How much time was enough time when time didn't exist?

A 41-hour-long slipstream ride, Beka had said. Which was impossible. And yet… The five times he'd experienced the Route of Ages had all been different – felt different: the two rides on the _Andromeda _with Beka at the helm had indeed felt as if they had taken ages. He couldn't tell how long really, in fact it could have been days. Or weeks. While when Trance had tessaracted him to Seefra from Arkology – which to his mind must have involved some sort of trespassing through some sort of Route of Ages, too – it had been something happening in the blink of an eye, just like the ride back from… wherever it had been that they had confronted Tyr for the last time. And unlike the passage taken to meet Tyr in the first place, that also had taken up a rather long… long-ish?... time…

Harper sighed, admitting defeat in his attempts to find a logical answer, to reach anything similar to a sensible decision. Something the intensifying explosions from the battle urged him to do.

* * *

They had been sitting on hot coals for weeks, fencing off attacks by Dragan fighters the tunnel spat at them, that had opened three times within 14 days only. The bombs were ready, the strategy unchanged, the slipstream scout decoded to give them a way home once the one at their disposal would have been destroyed on this side – provided they survived through it all. A prospect more than unlikely, as Harper had to agree with Doyle. Theoretically, there were other ways to reach the Vedran pocket-universes without the use of tesseracting technology, or so they assumed based on their experiences with Hasturi's Diary, on using the map towards the first Route of Ages Aurelia had delivered to them, on…

At which point, collectively or individually, everyone stopped in their musings, since they all knew that all of those experiences had been survived by sheer luck. Pure, dumb, unbelievable luck. Blocking away the thoughts of what lay ahead of them, they concentrated instead on doing their jobs while waiting for Rhade. Day after day, hour after hour – waiting. All of them impatient and fearful and annoyed, none more so than Beka.

Of course, she knew just as well as the next person that this was a war, and that the main thing war involved was waiting. It had been a tedious lesson that Dylan had time after time needed to call upon almost all his resources of patience, calm and wit to teach her, and probably the one she had found most difficult to learn. The one thing that had at the beginning of their adventure together somehow consoled Beka over having given up at least a part of her freedom and independence had been the thought about all the excitement and action that was lying ahead of them onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, fighting a war against all, for the good of them all. Instead – and to her somewhat dismayed surprise – she had found out the hard way that while indeed they were fighting a war, most about it had absolutely nothing to do with excitement or action. Yes, there were high-adrenaline moments of "Oh my God, we're not going to survive this," but what they were mainly doing was waiting. Wait for a world to accept picking up talks. Wait for meeting protocols to be set up. Wait during the talks. Wait till treaties were worked on to be signed. Wait, when things went wrong, to find out what exactly had gone wrong. Wait for good intelligence. Wait to see it confirmed. Wait to be summoned to act. Wait to be assigned. Get in position. Wait for the enemy. Engage the enemy, fight, then – after the battle – wait to see what has really come out of the fight. Wait till you're allowed to start on structure building. Wait for replacement. Then wait for reassignment. And while you do that… wait for the enemy to regroup. Then wait for the triumvirs and the Senate to get your messages and reach a decision. Finally: wait for reinforcement, rescue… or Rhade.

Business as usual, therefore; only this time Rhade didn't come.

Instead, when all their nerves had gotten almost bare threaded, a courier ship arrived, with Raphael Valentine onboard, bringing word that… Well, that Rhade was temporarily unavailable. The siege of Illion (no surprise to Harper) was more difficult than expected, the Sabra-Jaguar and the Commonwealth fleets more trouble to work into a unified front than anyone had foreseen (anyone but Harper), strategy compromises with Elsbett not quite as binding on her part as would have been desirable (geez, who'd have thought?) – plainly put:… there was no plain way to put this, as Beka's fit of temper upon receiving the news had made abundantly clear. Eventually, though, she had calmed down – and decided that she would wait no longer.

They were all on Command, when Beka had begun to release her orders, assigning each and every one of the Nietzscheans to their specific tasks and leaving precise instructions with _Penthesilea_. It was a bit redundant since everyone already knew how things were to be handled, but Harper knew that refreshing orders was a good way to ensure that there were not more screw-ups than absolutely necessary. Aware that his part onboard the Nietzschean flag-ship was coming to end, he had turned around, heading for the exit, when Beka's voice stopped him short:

"Trance, Doyle, Rafe: report to hangar bay 9 and start prepping the _Maru _for take-off. Bring Jonah Draeger along with you…"

The young engineer turned towards her, wide-eyed surprise all over his face.

"Draeger is coming with us?" he spurted out.

"Not us," Beka answered him sternly.

Harper frowned.

"Come again?"

She straightened herself, squaring her shoulders and meeting his eyes head-on.

"I'm sorry, Harper. Change of plans. With Rhade unavailable, I'm afraid that I'm gonna need you right here…"

"What?" he exploded into her explanation. "You're taking that scum with you while I'm to stay here? Of all the crazy, idiotic ideas you've had over the past months, this has gotta be the queen mother. Why?"

The blonde's eyes narrowed as she holds herself even more erect.

"Clear the deck," she then hissed. "Everyone but Harper."

With furtive glances thrown at the two humans, all Nietzscheans made their way towards the doors to the corridors. Impatiently, Harper just stared at her sternly, bursting out again as soon as the door had closed leaving only the two of them back on the bridge.

"Why?" he demanded to know once more.

"Because, as you may have noticed, those Dragans coming out of the tunnel are different…"

"You mean faster…"

"Not just that. Yes, I mean faster, but also more determined, more accurate and… not running. Never running to save their own skins, Harper. Unlike all other Nietzscheans, they don't put their own survival above everything else like… like we do…"

Beka stopped abruptly and a little breathless, her eyes clearly sending out a plea to him. _Harper, please,_ the eyes said. _Please, please do this, I can't wait for much longer… Harper, I need to get going. _He could almost hear the words in his head and his lips, already opened to ask her why she wasn't staying herself, if she deemed it all so necessary to stop them, closed again.

"The Sabra-Jaguar…" he began after a while, but she didn't let him continue.

"The Sabra-Jaguar will run if things don't go easy. They've done it before, it's what they always do."

The logic was irrefutable, the outcome inevitable. He let his head sink slowly.

"What… what about Doyle?" he finally wanted to know, observing Beka through almost closed eye-lashes. She sighed.

"She is the…" She stopped again, then shook her head. "She is the _Maru_'s avatar, Harper."

"Something you weren't exactly too happy about when you found out – and that I could change again…"

"Your first statement is not true, I was just surprised – and concerned. As for the second one: isn't that up to her to decide?"

"You care?"

"Yes, I do. And so do you, Harper. After all, it was you who taught me to care about it, no?"

_Dead-locked again_, Harper thought.

"Beka…" He tried to think of the right words, right arguments, but then, all of a sudden his shoulders sacked in a defeated. "You're right," he slowly stated. "Whether she wants to come along or not, should be Doyle's decision – and you do have a much better chance with her than without. And yes, I think you can use all chances you can get for what you're about to attempt. But Beks… I… I wish…" He drew in a deep breath. "What about the slipstream scout?"

"What about it? You decoded it, Trance can help me with it, to find our way home once we've…" The woman hesitated, then let out a sigh that seemed to start somewhere in her feet and break its way through to her like a tidal wave until it escaped her lips. "You think we stand no chance," she told him lowly. "You think it's hopeless…"

"You don't?" it break out of him.

"Then why didn't you say so all up until now? Why did…?

"Beka, I DID tell you. We all did tell you, but it just so happens that since you've heard about the possibility of Dylan still being… around," he simply couldn't bring himself to say 'alive', she noticed, "you refuse to listen…"

"That's not true."

"Okay, fine," he conceded. "That's not true. So what is true? Tell me, because I sure as hell can't figure this one out on my own. There is… there is one chance in millions you'll make it through this alive. The chances of finding Dylan are even slimmer. And for him to be in a state that would make it worthwhile…"

She snorted at him, angrily, outraged.

"After you heard about it the first time, you wanted yourself…"

"Yes, before I had thought it all through. Before I listened to all of what Trance had to say. Before Rhade came forward with all the info. Before…"

"I get it," Beka snapped at him. "You thought at first that we should try to save Dylan – if he is to be saved, but then you heard the odds and you rethought the matter. And now you think I'm insane for going through with it, neglecting my duties here and risking my life and that of others on a cause that is practically lost from the start and will benefit no-one but me."

"I didn't say that."

"No, but that's what you think, Harper…"

"Not quite. Even if you were to try and go alone, I'd still be against it…"

"Why?"

"Because this is – ALL of it – madness, no matter how you put it, even for you. You're going after Dylan and risking it all because you think that without him you won't manage to be what he convinced you that you can and should be. Only: if you can't be all of this without him… then there's no point to it, right? If you can't be all this without him, then you're NOT IT. If you're not the way you should be because you want it, because it's who you are, then all of it is just… an act you put up, not real. You're either one of the good guys or you're not. You can't be one of the good guys only for Dylan. You can not be loyal only to him – and not to the principles that he tried to live by."

"I am loyal to those principles, Harper. That's why I'm leaving you here, in charge, although I think that I would have a better chance of making it with you. A substantially better chance, even. It only just so happens that – Dylan's principles aside – I'm also loyal to him. As you are loyal to him, and me, and Doyle. Harper, I want and need Dylan back, but that's not all of it. We all need him, this… this whole structure, the universe we built over the past years still needs him. It will outgrow him at some point, eventually… But right now and right here it still needs him."

"Why?"

"Because it needs a balance between the old order and the new one. The Commonwealth fell because it was only loyal to principles. And our world never really worked, because ultimately we were only loyal to people. Dylan, who saw his world fall and looked upon our world with eyes not used to it… Dylan somehow managed to learn that both the absolute loyalty to principles or people are the way to downfall, that you need to combine both to make it work."

"Don't kid yourself, Beka. You are not going after the embodiment of hope for our future. You are going to try rescuing the man, not the symbol."

"True, but it also happens that by doing this, I just might end up rescuing both."

* * *

He had no longer argued, and no longer struggled. And now here he was, responsible for winning the fight she had left him in charge of, responsible of doing his best to ensure that the _Eureka Maru_ somehow made it through, responsible to hold the line until… He didn't want to think it through, until when or towards what end he was supposed to hold the line. It sufficed that he had to. And that was that. He stretched his hand out and pressed the com-link, breaking the radio silence.

"Wing-commander?"

"Sir?" a voice answered.

"It's time, launch the attack and distract the Dragans. 5 minutes, then get the hell out of here. I want to meet you all back onboard the _Penthesilea_. The Rosies are on their way. Harper out."


	72. Chapter 71

**Chapter**** 71**

She couldn't feel. She couldn't feel anything anymore except for the stabbing, piercing pain in her hands, that seemed frozen around the controls of the _Eureka Maru_. A pain she welcomed, knowing that it preceded complete, total numbness like the one that had long ago taken over the muscles of her back, her shoulders, her neck, her arms. A pain she feared, knowing that once the total numbness would have settled in her hands as well, she would no longer be able to perform the tiny, minuscule shifts and pushes her wrists and fingers could still transmit to her ships controls.

The universe, the world had narrowed down to the seemingly endless streak of white, twirling flash in front of her eyes, that – unlike slipstream strings – did not twist and turn, but narrowed, widened, deepened, sucking her ship in and rejecting it again, while the old freighter groaned and bucked under the pressure that shifted in intensity every few… seconds? Minutes? Hours?

She didn't know. For all she knew, the ordeal had been going on for days, weeks… Ages. And it will continue to go on forever. She was lost in the white storm of flashes in front of her eyes, in the icy, trembling numbness of her muscles, in the cramped stabs of pain piercing through her knuckles, her fingers, even her nails. Lost in the fear that the next deepening or narrowing would crush the ship with them all aboard, would suck them in into a sinkhole – and with them the last shred of hope to… To what? She no longer knew.

She had no idea why she had embarked on this crazy ride, why she held on to the controls with such an iron grip, why she didn't let go, why she didn't yell for help from the injector placed in her vicinity to… To whom?

To whomever there was whispering to her, incessantly murmuring the same words over and over again into her ears. Her ears? No. The voice was somewhere in her head, more precisely: somehow, the soft, intense, warmly vibrating voice was filling everything in her, fighting against the clammy cold sweat on her skin, against the frantic beats of her heart that seemed determined to leave her ribcage, urging her, pleading with her, beseeching her to…

"Beka, focus! Focus. Concentrate on the flow, go with it, Beka! Just go with it."

Go with what? With the searing stream of flash, the crushing weight pressing down on her shoulders, the violent strain tearing at her arms? Was she supposed to go with THAT? If so, she was pretty sure that she didn't want to go with it. She wanted release, she wanted support, she wanted help from…

There was help. Help that would have made the flashing white stream expand, reach out from outside her ship into her innermost core, ease the pains and numbness, soothe her mind, pour strength and grace and ease unto her failing muscles, fill her heart again with hope and courage. Help that would have made it all end. Why did they refuse her the help she needed?

They? HER. Trance. She felt her strained facial features twist into a mask of hate, her lips baring her clenched teeth into a feral snarl as her voice was battling the soreness of her vocal cords, trying to get out.

"Gimme a shot…" she hissed, in a cracked voice.

"No, Beka. You don't need it, just focus. Trust me, you can do this on your own. Focus, Beka, focus!"

She would have cursed, but at that very moment the ship jolted anew under her hands and got propelled forward, literally diving into the swirling light, that pulled stronger at her. Getting the _Maru_ back on track and keeping her on course while riding whatever wave was pushing from behind took everything she had for what seemed like forever.

* * *

She felt sick, with no way out. No way out but one, and Trance kept denying her that.

"No, Beka, don't give in. I can help you, focus on me, Beka. You can do it…"

_No,_ she wanted to scream, _no, I can't, not on my own, not with you, not for you! I need those bots, I need them right now or we'll all gonna die. Trance, please, for the Divine's sake, Trance, for… If I ever meant anything to you, if we were ever more than pawns for you, if Dylan… Trance, please…_

She didn't know though if she really had at some point or other uttered any of this, didn't know if Trance could hear and – if she did – would believe her. So far she hadn't, obviously.

Her head felt empty, with nothing as the relentless voice in it, keeping her anchored somehow, but also pestering, bothering her relentlessly.

She was tired. She was hot. Her hands, however (what she could feel of them), were icy. She was thirsty – and felt, at the same time, as if her bladder was just about to explode every given second. And she wondered how, while being absolutely convinced that her whole world had been reduced to the white-whirling, sucking flash-string in front of her and the incessant voice in her head, with no space to spare for anything else besides that, no room for feelings, hopes or thoughts, she could still think and fear the way she did.

The numbness creeping slowly forward and conquering her body part by part was worst. Until she felt cramps starting in her legs and spreading more and more, replacing the numbness and making her realize that there were worse things than not feeling.

* * *

She had not retained any memories like these from her past two passages through the wormhole. Or maybe they had not been like this at all, maybe the flash-bots then, besides sharpening her reflexes and strengthening her arms and back, had really neutralized all the effects the journey now had on her body. She couldn't recall the leaden legs, the swollen knuckles that felt like bursting, the safety belts cutting into her equally swollen torso, nor that her eyeballs had felt as dry as scratch paper and as if they were attempting to leave their sockets. Her tongue had not filled out her mouth that way, threatening to cut off her air supply, that no longer could be satisfied by what she seemed able to breathe in through her nostrils, nor had her throat felt like too narrow a pipe clogged with sand.

* * *

And then there was something… else… Something like a silent bang, with the white flash outside the _Eureka Maru_ becoming even whiter and flashier, with an enormous pressure pushing her back and down into her seat to then jet her forward, into the seatbelts cutting into her flesh like knives. And they were out of the wormhole and back into normal space or into whatever posed as normal space around Ral Parthia. Then the tunnel closed.

* * *

Around the old freighter floating on the verge of a small system consisting of two suns and three planets, once more distant stars in unknown constellations twinkled far away in an almost mocking way that seemed to say "It's futile, we can't be reached…"

Doyle sighed at the somehow familiar sight.

The suns seemed both in size and shade somewhat… anemic; thrown in together they might have made one decent, if still not really big star. The planets, none closer to them than 120 and none farther away than 190 mil. km, were iridescent between lush-green and azure, but displaying here and there huge, ugly, reddish-brown spots. And they looked identical.

Adjusting her arms to form a stronger grip, the android bent her head down to the ear of Trance, who had collapsed the instant they had exited the tunnel and was now securely held by the blonde.

"Trance? Trance, please, what's wrong? Can you hear me?"

Her pleas remained unanswered, the seemingly slight figure a dead weight in her arms. Sighing again, Doyle bent down and placed one arm under the avatar's knees, lifting her up. A little struggling, not so much under the weight as such, but under – for lack of a better word – 'solidity' she carried, the blonde made her way out of the cockpit and over to the crew's quarters, where Raphael Valentine and Jonah Draeger were strapped in their cots, both gripping the handles at the bunk-margins with knuckles white from effort, and both looking like death warmed over.

"You can relax," Doyle took pity on them.

Breathing hard and swallowing a few times, Rafe was making visible efforts to speak, as his hands unclenched.

"Are we clear?" he finally pressed out in a strangled voice.

"That's what I said, no?" the android threw over her shoulder, her attention unwavering from the charge in her arms and passing by him on her way to the small captain's quarters.

"What happened to Trance?" Beka's brother, hurrying after her, wanted to know.

"I don't know. She stood by Beka during the whole flight, then simply dropped to the deck."

"And Beka?"

"I don't know," Doyle repeated. "She's hanging in her belts, unconscious…"

"But… haven't you checked?"

"Rafe, I am **constantly** monitoring you all. But I can only take care of you one at a time. Beka's alive and… well, not good, but stable. Trance, however, is…" Her voice dropped as she placed the golden girl on the bed.

"What? You mean she's not alive?"

Even android patience had limits. She swirled around and straightened herself up.

"She is an avatar, Rafe. She doesn't breathe, she doesn't have a physiology similar to yours, she doesn't have a metabolism, she doesn't…" She stopped, realizing that she was ranting. Her eyes set heavily on the man's face, she sighed. "She's sick, Rafe, feverish, sweating and – I believe – hyperventilating, maybe even in pain. The last time this happened, she almost went supernova on us. So, if you don't mind, I would rather start cooling Trance down first before I do anything else. If you're so concerned with your sister, which h you probably should be, why don't you just make yourself useful and go look after her? Maybe you can even make Jonah lend you a hand…"

It seemed as if direct orders were all that he had needed. With an abrupt turn, Raphael Valentine set himself in motion and headed back to where he had come from.

"Draeger, Beka needs help," he curtly informed the other man, who was still sitting on the edge of his bunk, looking as if he would be throwing up any minute. "Pull yourself together!"

* * *

She was aware that they were there. Well, that someone was there… Talking to her. Strapping her out of the seatbelts. Dislodging her fingers one by one from the steering handles. Then attempting to get her out of the seat. She had however spent so much time in it, that her body seemed to have molded itself into the form with the solidity of concrete.

"Beka, come on, help us a little here…"

She tried to focus, tried to firmly set her almost blind eyes on the vague contours she made out left and right of her. It wasn't easy. In their constant shifting, the figures next to her seemed almost liquid. Which, judging by their grip on her arms, they obviously couldn't be.

"Beka…" the voice motioned anew. It was familiar, but not like the one that had been with her for… oh, like forever until just… a short time ago.

"Who…?" she wanted to ask, only to find out that she couldn't speak. The concrete seemed to have found a way to block not alone her body, but also her jaws, gluing her teeth together and turning her vocal cords into useless wires.

"Oh, shit! Booster rocket…"

Rafe. She wanted to relax, but if Rafe was there, then this could clearly not be the right time to do so. One never should relax with Rafe in the proximity.

Something entered her vision field, and then her numbed-down senses perceived something, like warm and wet and…

"Beka, take a sip. Just hold still and let me wet your lips with some tea," the voice she now knew to be Rafe's intruded again into her train of thought. Never one to do what big brother told her, she did for a moment consider rebelling against it. But she was too tired, too sore and for once his suggestion seemed like a good idea.

"Beka, you did it. We made it. You got us through. Jonah and I are going to move you over to a bunk – and then you relax, okay?"

Yes, definitely some good ideas there. She complied. Well, there had to be a first time for everything. There was. A giant fist seemed to hit her, the body she was leaning against, everything else around her. It didn't hurt, but it somehow seemed to suck away all the air, the gravity, the air-pressure, the temperature, everything. With a sigh, she embraced back the darkness.


	73. Chapter 72

**Chapter 72**

She blinked lazily, reluctant to leave the comfortable darkness. Why did people always associated light with good? And never with aches and sorrows and the need to face problems and solve them, take responsibility for whatever you had done to others and yourself?

Speaking of which: what _had _she done to herself? Her head seemed willing to split at any given moment. Her back, shoulders and arms hurt like hell and there seemed to be a slight tremor running up and down through her body, one that she was trying to suppress – without succeeding.

"Beka?"

"Leave me alone…" she said. Well, wanted to say. Out came only a mumbled, unintelligible croak. She swallowed convulsively, her throat hurting with dryness.

But then she felt herself lifted from behind, supported by something warm, and big, and solid. A glass was held against her lips.

"Here, drink it…" the voice instructed. For lack of a better idea, she obeyed. It helped. The piercing drums in her head seemed to quiet down a bit, and the leaden feel to her eyelids lessened. Despite the painful stiffness in her neck, she tilted her head up in an attempt to get a look at the source of the voice. And then bolted away in one major jump, all protests of her body forgotten or ignored.

"**You**!" she spat. "What are you doing here?"

Jonah Draeger carefully placed the glass he was still holding on a shelf and raked a hand through his hair.

"Right now? I'm trying to get you back on track," he answered. "In general?" He shrugged. "You're guess is as good as mine. It's not as if I volunteered or something."

True. The memories hit Beka all at once. They had brought Jonah Draeger indeed kicking and screaming, so to speak, first to the Penthesilea, then to the_ Eureka Maru_ before they'd taken off into the opening wormhole. He had begged, pleaded, shouted, even struggled physically against Beka's decision to take him along on her trip to Ral Parthia.

_"Why?" he had shouted at her. "What do you need me for?"_

_"You're the only one who knows his way around Ral Parthia – myself set aside. And I wasn't exactly at my sharpest when I was there…"_

_"I don't want to go…"_

_"Well, my last trip there wasn't exactly voluntary, either. But you made me do it. Consider this a pay-back."_

_He had still struggled some more. She had threatened, then promised him full pardon for his help, even money. Money she didn't have and that the Commonwealth wouldn't pay. It didn't matter to Beka, she still did and said everything she could think of in order to persuade him. It was to no avail, so in the very end, she had concluded the matter:_

_"Look, Jonah, it's fairly simple: you're coming along, whether you want it or not. You can agree to it all, and I'll see to it that you get full pardon. And I'll even get you enough money to start somewhere anew. Or you can continue making a fuss about it, then you can make the trip bound and gagged, with no deal in the end. But one way or the other: you are coming along."  
_

Yes, she remembered it all. Looking around the empty crew-quarters, Beka frowned.

"What happened?"

"We made it…" the man informed her. "But then, the golden chick passed out, your blonde killer-babe was taking care of her, you were pretty much gone, so your brother and I decided to take care of you. And then we got hit by… Well, there was this… this… I don't know, on Seefra we had those whirlwinds, you know…"

"Whirlwind? In space?"

"Well, I don't know how better to describe it. Some enormous wave, that hit the system, ripping the outer planet apart, causing major damage on the two remaining ones and sending us nearly crashing into the Ral Parthia's moon. Your brother managed to pull us out of the mess…"

Beka nodded.

"Looks like Harper's love life with the Rosies was worthwhile. Where is he now?"

"Harper?"

Beka rolled her eyes.

"No, Rafe…"

"Sneaking us to a safe landing place on Ral Parthia's moon. There are all sorts of caves and tunnels there, where he thinks that we can effectively hide the _Maru_. And apparently, one planet blowing off was a good thing, since there now are chunks of it scattered all over the place that we can behind."

"Let me guess: the Dragans went berserk…"

"Wouldn't you, after such a disaster hitting your system? The whole place is now squirming with patrols. They think they're under attack or something…"

"Don't worry," Beka curtly interrupted. "Rafe's a good pilot, he'll get us down safely. What about Doyle?"

"Trance is still out of it – and Doyle is taking her of her since she seems to be running a fever."

"Shit!" the young woman cursed to his surprise, turning on the heels and storming away. Jonah sprinted after her.

"Beka? Hey, Beka! Wait! What's the rush?"

She didn't stop, but slowed down, letting the man catch up with her.

"That creature you once captured, held prisoner and used to frighten off, torture and kill your opponents… Do you remember it?"

"Of course I do. And I didn't kill anyone…"

"Well, you were dead set on killing Dylan… If you're not in the habit of killing your opponents, does that mean that you reserved special treatment for him? Or was it more like a hobby?"

"We went through this…"

"Yeah, we did." She sounded tired, bitter. "You're right, let's drop that. Anyway: that creature – that was Trance."

"What?"

"She is an avatar, like… Rommie and Doyle, you know."

"What?"

"Well, not exactly like them. She is the avatar of Tarn-Vedra's sun…"

_"What?"_

"…and the last time she ran a fever, she nearly went super-nova," Beka concluded, disregarding Jonah Draeger's input completely.

**"What?"**

"You know, repeating the same word over and over again won't change a damn' thing about the facts."

"Fine. What will?" the man exclaimed, exasperated.

The _Maru_'s captain stopped briefly in front of the small med-deck's doors, lightly resting her hand against the panel. She threw him a long look, then just silently shook her head, her fingers touching the small screen.

"Last time it was plasma of her sun. Let's hope that this time things are different," she offered quietly as the door slid open. "Doyle…"

"Beka!" The blonde barely looked up from the control panels she was checking next to the cryo-chamber Trance was encased in. "Good thing you came. How are you?"

"Fine," her captain replied. "How is Trance?"

"Stable, but she needs constant monitoring, I think."

"Stable's good." Beka's voice revealed palpable relief. "Update?"

"Harper's bombs worked, the tunnel imploded. The system got wrecked, one planet was shattered to pieces. Junk from it is everywhere – and the Dragan patrols are squirming all over the place," Doyle crisply gave her a recap. "The _Maru _has sustained some damage, but nothing major. I need a couple of hours to have everything back up and running. Rafe is just landing us on the moon, we should be able to hide here."

"I know, I noticed the back-thrusters," Beka said.

Her ship's android tilted her head in a typical gesture, her look weighing.

"How do you want to play this? I'm gonna be stuck here with repairs and Trance."

"I know, I'm taking Rafe along."

"You're taking Rafe along to where?" Jonah Draeger demanded to know, cutting in on them in an irritated tone. Beka barely threw him a side glance.

"Is everything ready?"

Doyle nodded.

"Yes. Are you sure you're up to it already?"

"Up to what?" the man asked anew. The two women kept ignoring him.

"I am. I'm taking the slip-fighter, Rafe and Jonah follow me in an AM9D."

"We are?" Draeger wanted to know. "An AM9D as in really, really small tiny shuttle with practically no defenses?"

"An AM9D as in really, really undetectable by most sensors," Beka retorted sharply. "Especially while myself and all the drones Doyle can launch will – courtesy of Harper's FMS devices – make the Nietzs think that they've come under attack from an entire big, bad Commonwealth assault fleet."

"You mean you're not coming with us? But I thought the purpose of this whole operation was to search Ral Parthia for Dylan…"

"And how do you propose I do this – search a whole planet for someone in a stasis-chamber while I'm under attack in a slip-fighter? Even with Maru's sensors at her disposal, it was more than just a bit of good luck that Doyle managed to find us on Myrmidon."

"So you want me to figure out where they keep Dylan and get him out of there with your brother?"

"No, I want you to figure out the best spots for you and Rafe to place explosives in order to create the most confusion on the planet."

"What? Why?"

"So that they think that it's not just their space, but even the planet that's being invaded."

"It won't take them long to figure out that it's all just a diversion…"

"Let them. They already think that they're being attacked, and I don't think that anyone of them is under any illusions about who's attacking them and why…" Beka threw Draeger an almost amused look. "They know they have Dylan… or what's left of him. They know that I want him. And while they will do their best to fend us off, they will first and foremost bring their assets to safety. We're talking Musseveni here, Jonah. He'll run – and he will have Dylan with him… And when he does, I'll board him and take over."

"How will you know what ship it is? The whole system is squirming with ships... And how do you know you can sneak onboard undetected and get to Dylan, an sneak out with him?"

"The ship will be the one breaking surface and not engaging in battle. And I won't sneak away with Dylan, I'll take the damn' thing over."

"For all you know Musseveni could have a whole batallion of guards with him."

"He won't. It's gonna big a small ship. And I know him: he isn't much into sharing anything with others. He'll travel light, you'll see."

There were other objections hanging in the air. It came, but not from Draeger.

"Beka, if you sneak onboard, and manage to overpower them, and really find Dylan, and things still go wrong from there… I mean, what if a call needs to be made, so that we don't all die here, even if it means giving up on Dylan. Will you make that call? If in the end what's best for all of us might still be bad for Dylan, what then? Will you be in charge of us, will you make a decision as leader of this mission – or as Dylan's friend, who loves him and wants him back?"

"That's what I want to know, too," Jonah ventured bitterly. "After all, there are a lot of 'if's in this plan of yours."

"This mission IS about us being Dylan's friends, Doyle. And you're right: whatever decisions I make here and now, I make it as Dylan's friend. But if… if a call really needs to be made between your all lives and his, I'll let him go…" _I promise_, she wanted to add, but couldn't. Doyle watched her intensively, listening carefully to what she said – and didn't. Then she nodded.

"Okay," she acknowledged quietly. "I'll be here…" _To take over if you don't._ The words remained unspoken, them too, but Beka heard them, just as Doyle had heard the ominous omission before.

"Right," she agreed, placing a hand lightly on the avatar's shoulder and squeezing it briefly. "I'll be off, then. Jonah, Rafe knows what to do. Com me as soon as you have all explosives in place, then get the hell out of there and head back to the _Maru_. Doyle, take care of Trance, see if you can bring her around, we will need her. Prep everything we can launch at them accordingly and have it ready to go at my command. And repair the damage to the _Maru_. Let's bring it, people."


	74. Chapter 73

**Chapter 73**

The minute Rafe and Jonah Draeger were clear of Ral Parthia, Beka got word from Doyle. She hoped that everything had gone smoothly, but she didn't have much time to consider it all.

Her slip-fighter's sensors picked up the explosions that had begun to trigger off on the planet's surface; in orbit of Ral Parthia's moon and keeping herself and the once more fully operational _Eureka Maru_ on the satellite's far side, Doyle had her hands full with the battle, monitoring the FMS-camouflaged drones and missiles, pods and dummies that the old freighter kept spewing out, transmitting through scrambled channels that she kept changing data to Beka's ship, that her captain had hidden safely amidst a formation of drones made to look like a slip-fighter squadron building a defense-line for a _Maru_ masquerading once more as a High Guard ship-of-the-line, this time of the Siege Perilous class. The Nietzschean ships making it to the far side of the moon were few and far between, but here and there some came through, only to be fought off by the "squadron"… of remote-controlled drones and one manned fighter. Beka Valentine had her hands full, as well.

Onboard the _Maru_ and despite all assurances Beka had given her, Doyle couldn't keep a thin thread of worry from accompanying her processes. She knew Beka. She knew that she was good. She had fought alongside her for years, knew the way she flew, attacked, commanded, knew how much she cared about all of those she perceived as "hers". But she also knew that in the end Beka's loyalty belonged to Dylan – and Dylan only. That time and again it had trumped everything, even the love she felt for everyone else beside him, and that – with him threatened – Beka was always at risk to turn and go for total annihilation of everything, herself included.

And after what Doyle had seen on Myrmidon and what had transpired later, somehow the avatar nearly enjoyed that knowledge. Still, there was only so much destruction one could cause with an old freighter, a slip-fighter, a fleet of blanks and five people, of which one was out, one not particular loyal and engaged with one more somewhere else, and the last a dare-devil commander with her mind set on long-shots.

Impatiently, the avatar checked once more for a ship – any ship – breaking orbit and not engaging in the battle, her focus so intense that she nearly missed one Garuda suddenly appearing out of no-where and taking shots at her. Luckily, Beka was there.

"More power to the stern shields, Doyle," she barked, breaking position and taking out the Nietzschean, then returning to her initial spot amidst the drones. "Status update," she then demanded a few minutes later.

"Well," Doyle answered her promptly, "I think you got your wish. We've 'successfully engaged' the enemy all over the system."

"Good. Maneuver all dummies you can, so that they keep the Nietzscheans' attention on them."

"Aye," her avatar replied. Beka had no idea if she agreed with her or not, but she didn't care. As long as there was at least someone along on this trip, who didn't constantly argue with her on everything. For the time being, she was happy to let the Dragans fire on their "ships", increasing some of the shields here and there and let them hammer away to keep them occupied and looking at them, instead for Rafe. Unfortunately, though, it couldn't go on forever. She needed, really _needed_ Musseveni to try and break out…

"_Always have an emergency exit for your plans,"_ she could almost hear Dylan's voice in her head. And: _"Never bet on a long-shot, my father used to tell me. Fortunately, I only listened to my mother."_

"Oh, Dylan," she softly muttered to herself, "you've always been nothing if not decisive and uncomplicated, haven't you now?" Then she shook her head, opened a new com-channel to the _Maru_ switching again frequency and cleared her throat:

"Doyle, launch a new salvo of drones at them and have one's FMS programmed to make it look like an AAC, so that they may believe more in the invasion-scenario. Secure it heavily with missiles for as long as we don't have word on Rafe that he's safe. Once we do, let the Nietzscheans get heavily down on it, but make it look as if it's retreating. Actually, make it look as if it's running away to lick its wounds. Then stop throwing anything else at them. Make it look like we're beaten. As soon as Rafe and Jonah are back onboard, send out their pod with FMS blinking as if it were a flag-ship, but have the shields all down, so they can take it out."

"Captain, we don't really have that many real vessels; our… resources are rather limited, and we can't afford to sacrifice…"

"We can't play to win while not giving them something they can detect as really massive debris from us. If Musseveni gets word of his Nietzs gaining somewhere the upper-hand and working on a breach, he'll try and break through, retreat and wait somewhere safe for things to go his way."

"Beka, if we let them destroy what little ships we DO have, there will shortly be a lot more debris for them to detect than we might care for," Doyle's answer came sharply back, the previous respectful "Captain" evaporating into the vacuum of space between them.

"We've been over this already: we need to smash the head of the hydra and hope that the rest of it follows suit. If we fail to draw Musseveni out, then all of this is pointless. We have to make sure that he gets both an incentive to perceive us a serious threat _and_ a little surge of his natural overconfidence, so that he moves out. Once he does, he'll be too busy to notice one little fighter on his tail."

On the small monitor she could see the avatar's serious gaze shifting from the controls to throw her a short, but heavy look. She sighed softly. Rommie and Harper were not there, but Doyle was doing a good job at replacing them. Was that the effect she had on all of her crew, always? Turning each and every one from professional crew-mates into friends feeling no greater need than to temper her rashness with huge doses of restraint? Was this the source of the constant, sometimes breathtaking control on all of her actions that Dylan had always been striving for – and failing? Ultimately the source of whatever had brought them all to this point?

"If he feels safe enough, he may try to influence the battle on his way out. Whatever ship he'll be on, he will have some escort. If he senses the battle going his way, he'll cave, unable to resist temptation to show off. He'll let the shields down and open up, to let at least a few of his own fighters out to finish off whomever he thinks is out there. That's all I need…"

"And then you fight your way to him onboard, with no possibility for Rafe to come to your aid? You will not be able to destroy the ship and get yourself – let alone Dylan, safely out…"

"I won't have to. I will take the ship over, then join you. Doyle, I know Musseveni; he won't have many people along with him. I really think I will be able to handle it all like this."

The Seefraine threw her another look that was clearly questioning her… sanity? Yeah, like she'd never had one of those before.

"We're running a high risk on _hope_, Beka. You'll have no back-up, no way out but one…"

Valid points, all of them. Yes, but…

"True, only I think it's worth it."

"Beka…"

"You have your orders. Valentine out," she ended the debate.

Doyle's face closed down. Indeed, that ended the matter. She had her orders and they stood. She had volunteered for this mission under Beka's command – and at war no-one disobeyed superiors, no matter how crazy they sounded. Just because Beka had made it a habit with Dylan, didn't mean that… Oh hell, it meant nothing, not that it should be done or that it could be done as something one could away with or that…

There was a slightly disgusted smirk on Doyle's face as she proceeded obeying her captain's orders, but she _did_ obey them. Noticing it, Beka smiled with sadness; she wished Doyle had done it less reluctantly, but in the end all that mattered was that she did it. She had no time to continue trying to convince her avatar, to explain that the reason that Dylan had always put up with her… unorthodox methods was simply because he liked the results.

* * *

Less than an hour later Beka Valentine came to watch the drop-pod, that even her own sensors identified as one imposing atmospheric attack carrier, fall apart. If she hadn't known better, she could have sworn herself that – courtesy of the Nietzscheans' superior fire power – a so far impressive, if careless Commonwealth flotilla had taken a major blow.

And then, barely ten minutes after this, there it was: a Leviathan Roused-class ship emerging from Ral Parthia was passing through the Nietzschean lines and the exploding dummies, heading for open space. Unlike Beka's expectations, though, it didn't seem inclined to rise to any bait and grasp the chance at causing more damage to the presumed attackers. She furrowed her brows, irritated by an image of Doyle with one of her typical "told ya' so"-expressions flashing through her mind. Biting her lip, she began pressing some codes into the FMS control panel to her right. And then she rushed after the ship she had detected, her drone-'squadron' around her – as it was a last, desperate attempt of a fighter-squadron to regain initiative.

With a tense face, Beka Valentine just hoped that the ship would feel threatened enough to decide to take the smaller fighters out – for which it would have to send out some of their own. It was with enormous relief that she shortly thereafter observed the Leviathan doing exactly that.

She let her 'squadron' form up all around her, covering her and obscuring her position as the obvious – and only – leader. Maneuvering them all, the pilot slowly moved closer and closer to the big space-ship; with a sharp yanking of the controls, she harshly broke formation to the left, in a move brusque enough to nearly cause her fighter to spin out and that sent her cutting in right in front of the fighters coming – as desired – from the cruiser straight ahead of her.

Although she had not planned to take any action against them, in the end she couldn't help herself firing on some of those that almost presented themselves to her as if on a platter, managing even to take out two of them.

But then Beka forced her mind to focus back on the task ahead, zigzagged past the last ones still exiting the Leviathan's hangar bay and shot down the gaping hole of the cruiser, smoothly setting her fighter down and unbuckling her seatbelts with practiced fingers, all in one fluent move. She took out the forcelance attached to her hip with one hand and opened the cockpit with the other, mechanical noises assaulting her ears as soon as she did it.

The ship's sounds that had been still muffled within the slip-fighter hit her full force – along with blaster fire from at least three Dragans at the hangar's exit.

Jumping out of her vessel so as to have it offering her some cover, Beka, threw a quick look around, trying to figure out if there was another way out of there – one that might not have led her past the Nietzschean guards. Detecting a small passage like some sort of emergency exit on the left side of the hangar, she took a deep breath, pulled out her own gun with her left hand and sprinted towards the presumed escape while doing her best to deflect the barrage of blaster fire. Realizing what she was about to o, one of the Nietzscheans began to yell at the others, motioning towards a panel close by to one of his companions. The man called to attention dropped his gun and started to type a code into the panel, to cause the small, narrow passage to start shutting down.

With the alertness of despair, Beka shot him, hitting him squarely in the back. The other man next to him moved in to take his place, finishing inserting the code. A heavy metal door began to slide down quick enough to let Beka realize that she would never make it in time on her two feet before the exit was closed. And so she dived, managing to roll under it and into the corridor behind it just in time before it hit the deck. The other side was dark, with only a dim light marking a pass a few steps to the right, blocked by some sort of grate. Had this been a holo-vid of Harper's, she would have thrown herself against it with all might, but she had had enough of clichéd drama by then and neatly sliced through it with her forcelance.

And then she was through and in a broader hallway. Blinking a bit in the suddenly brighter light, Beka breathed slowly out in relief, then turned around and took off running towards where she knew the med-bay to be on such ships.


	75. Chapter 74

**Chapter 74**

She bit her lip and pressed herself against the bulkhead. Damn'! The corridor in front of her leading to one of the ramps, that would have brought her to the lower deck where med-bay was located, was blocked by two Nietzscheans. Not that she didn't think herself capable to take both of them out, but fights cost time, valuable time that she might be needing later-on. Then again, so did any retreat to search for another way down.

With a grin, she jumped forward, both hands holding gauss-guns, her index fingers glued to the triggers. Surprise helped – and she did indeed take one Nietzschean out. The other one, though, advanced at high speed, dodging the fire and trying to ram her.

She didn't have much space to step aside and he collided with her, although she had been fast enough to avoid being hit full force. Still, one gun was knocked out of her hand and she found herself flying backwards and hitting the deck hard enough to have the breath knocked out of her lungs. The drive let her slide over the floor for some five meters, until the bulkhead stopped her. At the other end of the corridor, the Nietzschean was struggling to get himself standing again, so Beka shot from her remaining gun – that blocked. With a curse, she threw the damned thing away and went for the forcelance attached to her thigh. The man had just made it back on his feet when he got hit mid-chest and collapsed again.

"Right…" Beka Valentine muttered under her breath. "Not as time-costly as I thought, after all."

Scrambling to her feet, she started down the ramp, but then came to a halt: there were more guards down there. As silently as she could, she slowly began to withdraw. Over the next 20 minutes she tried several paths, but way after way presented obstacles in form of one Nietz or other. With others in the vicinity, she didn't dare to engage in yet another fight. Slowly, without anyone else but her noticing it, she found herself pushed towards Command.

* * *

Paul Musseveni didn't need any intel to know who was behind the attack. He'd watched every bit of it from his command center on Ral Parthia and, ranging from the fact that the enemy fleet were taking enormous risks by coming there in the first place and instigating it all right down to the tactics they were employing, that the word 'kamikaze' would have described but mildly, it practically dripped of Beka Valentine's signature. It wasn't long before they had to drop back, but even retreating, they still made it look like something of an offensive. They stood no chance – no chance at all, and yet they refused to acknowledge it. Rebekkah Valentine couldn't have left her imprint on it any more clearly if she'd tried on purpose. As usual she was reckless, overly confident, rash and displaying a quick temper that led to absolute unpredictability, making all plans concerning her (including her own) not worth a throne.

However, for all of her impulsivity, Valentine was clearly no newbie to military command, either. She was a captain in her own right, and, as grudgingly as Musseveni had to admit it, that was a title she earned to its fullest. The young woman obviously was both a good commander and a good strategist. Which made a prudent retreat and observation from afar the wisest, safest course of action when it came to her, if for no other reason than the one that he simply didn't believe for a single moment that Beka Valentine would – now that she had come this far – ever _just _retreat. He knew that she was here because she wanted something, something he had and was not inclined to give away ever again. Not to her, not to anybody else.

And so he gathered his… ace, along with his small family and a handful of skilled fighters onboard the Leviathan, intent to wait and see how things developed. Tabea had objected. She saw no reason for this course of action, no reason at all. Paul Musseveni had nearly frowned. It was amazing: no matter how hard he tried to teach her, no matter how deviously smart and capable she was, nothing ever managed to keep the incredible amount of condescendence at bay, that crippled her judgments time and time again. A flaw she shared with an entire, otherwise quite perfect race. It was strange how much easier astigmatism could be wiped out from a genetic code than a superiority complex.

Of course, both Thalia and Tabea, who were with him on the bridge, were inclined to think that the maneuvers they observed were exactly what they were supposed to look like: as if the small Commonwealth fleet really attempted to draw the Ral Parthian forces out with the intention of gaining a superficial victory on the remote chance that it may gain them a more favorable position. Musseveni knew better. He knew that regardless of Valentine's recklessness, she would never go for something that was basically useless from a strategic point of view: Beka didn't have the resources to hold any ground she might have gained. No matter how many Ral Parthians she killed, the Nietzscheans could afford to lose them, because they could replace them. The Commonwealth fleet could not. She knew it - and she was not one for sacrifices just to offer a good show.

Musseveni smiled quietly when he saw his assumptions confirmed as one of the attack cruisers succumbed to the fire it had been subjected to. His grin broadened as it splintered under the shots, parts breaking off and scattering all over the space around them.

Although the Commonwealth's efforts were admirable, it became quite clear that the battle was not one of those likely to go on interminably.

It was in that precise moment that his com-link sounded. He reached for it, looking forward to the good news, expecting an update on the destroyed enemy vessels – or (and that would have been the ultimate cherry on top) even on the capture of one certain Captain Rebekkah B. Valentine.

"Yes?" he asked curtly, his eyes still fixed on the sight of the flashing darkness of space outside his window. Explosions continued to rip the velvet blackness apart, cutting moment-long gashes through it, that the dark quickly stitched back together, allowing only debris and shards of dead ships to still punctually pierce through its cover.

"We've had a security breach, My Lord. We believe… we believe a Commonwealth force must have made it onboard," a male voice informed him.

Musseveni's eyebrows shot upward. With a bit of luck, this could be cause for a major celebration.

"How many?"

"Just one, Sir. But… three of our men were taken down in the main hangar."

Oh yes, celebration time. Finally all those years, those decades spent with the memory of a man declaring his proudest accomplishment a failure, reducing him to nothing but a heap of dirt begging for his life at the request of a woman, who had never understood, let alone appreciated the honor he'd bestowed upon her, would pay off. He had earned this, had been patient, and though the strategic significance of having brought down both Beka Valentine and Dylan Hunt would prove indeed enormous once he was back in Commonwealth space, Paul Musseveni found himself far more satisfied by the personal victory this represented.

"Excellent," he commented, closing his eyes in pleasure, allowing the mental image of a battle-weary, thoroughly defeated Beka Valentine to pour balm on the wounds she and her captain had inflicted on his self-esteem so many decades ago. "Bring Captain Valentine to me, please."

"Sir, I'm sorry to report that… we haven't captured him yet."

His eyes snapped opened, his fingers clenching around the console in front of him until the bones of his hand creak in protest, anger at the failure – and at his own foolishness – marring his features. They had not captured _her_. She had taken out three people, which meant there were only five more standing between her and him – and that included both his wife and his daughter. And they hadn't even seen her, otherwise the guard wouldn't have spoken of _him_.

"Is it my daughter?" The cool, precise voice of Thalia van Oudekerk cut through his thoughts.

"What do you think?" he snapped, annoyed.

The petite woman straightened herself up.

"Let's split," she calmly suggested. "Tabea, go greet the… family. Take all men with you, please. Paul, it may be best if you stay here."

"And you? What are you going to do?"

"I'll evacuate med-deck," she informed them crisply. "I'll be in hangar-bay 1 prepping for… any eventuality that may call for a hastened departure of ours from here."

"Don't be ridiculous," the old man protested.

She simply looked at him in silence, with cold eyes and a face almost statuesque in its impassibility. "Ridiculous?" she then asked in a low voice. "How did she get on board?" she queried further, the voice dropping even more

"Probably when we lowered the shields to allow our own fighters out…"

"Yes, so we could light up space a little bit more with shots here and there. Tabea, I said go."

The young woman just nodded and left without a word.

"What is your point?" Paul Musseveni demanded to know in the silence stretching after his daughter's leave.

"My point is that every fool can ignite a little fire-work. **She **is no fool, obviously..." The open ending said it all: B_ut you are. And you shouldn't be, you can't afford to be, you should be better than this._

"You're right," the man conceded within seconds. "You're right. Go. Tabea will detain her. And if not, I'll be there to stop her. And if not, we'll meet in the hangar-bay."

"Good. Find a way to let me know if all those marvelous plans fail."

"So you can do what, Thalia?"

"So I can deal with her myself."

* * *

In the end, she simply couldn't avoid them. Luckily, after having joined one another, obviously for a brief instruction, they spread out farther again. She stalked them, one by one, taking them out, one by one, most appropriately using Dylan's choice of weapon to do it. Although, with her being her, she departed from his modus operandi. The lance was set to kill. In the end, in the large hallway leading to the bridge, she found herself confronted by a familiar figure: the young woman she'd seen in _Andromeda_'s recordings, the one that Rafe had identified as their… _her _sister. Well, half…

"Give yourself up now, Captain, and I _may _decide to spare your life," the amazing creature said.

Yeah, right.

"Oh, hold your breath!" she dismissed the offer in her usual, cavalier manner. "_I _may also win this fight. Which, by the way, isn't yours."

The red-head narrowed her eyes.

"You're Beka…"

"Indeed I am. And you're baby-sister… Why don't you just turn around and walk away as long as you are still being offered a choice in the matter?"

"Why should I? My men…"

"Are lying dead in the corridors. They were – as your father would put it – rather sloppy…"

Tabea raised her gun.

"If you think smart-ass quips amuse me: they don't. Now, drop your force-lance or I'll drop you."

"I thought smart-ass quips didn't amuse you?" Beka retorted in an ironic voice, raising one of her eye-brows.

"I was on the _Andromeda_, you know… Your golden boys there couldn't defeat me…"

"My… 'golden boys' let you escape with a fake slipstream scout and an avatar onboard, who managed to get both me and Dylan Hunt away from Myrmidon, along with my ship. Sounds pretty much like a defeat to me."

"Yes, well – it hasn't really done the good captain much good now, right?" The words came out fast and sharp and cruel, almost before she had had a chance to really think them through. The Nietzschean was still uttering them when she noticed that this may very well have been a mistake.

"Oh, **shut **the hell up!" Beka exclaimed, extending the force-lance and lunging herself at Tabea.

Unlike Dylan Hunt, Beka Valentine had always had quite a defined taste for hatred – and when Tyr Anasazi had betrayed them, she had taken to hating him without any of the difficulties her other crew-mates seemed to experience in the matter. Still: there were some things for which she would be forever indebted to the Kodiak. Like all the teachings she had received from him in terms of hand to hand combat. He always did tell her about the importance of using surprise, of how she didn't have to wait for adversaries to get done posturing and spouting pompous declarations. Since she never was very patient to begin with, it suited her well.

Though she clearly wasn't yet expecting it, Tabea managed however to catch Beka's strike with her gun and push it aside, slashing her sister's lance far enough to the side to make it catch the bulkhead. The metal screamed, but the sparks faded quickly, leaving merely an unimpressive slash behind. It was enough though to buy her some time. Due to the narrow space where shooting would have too dangerous, the gun disappeared from Tabea's hand, to be replaced by a force-lance, as well. But Beka didn't spend much time on musing where that one had come from. Instead, she just kept coming.

It really was quite narrow. Both lances time and time again got deflected and hit the bulkheads. Perhaps they should have started this in a more open area after all. At least Tabea seemed to see things this way, because all of a sudden she just turned long enough to sprint for the end of the hallway, where the corridor opened to a more open space right in front of Command. She barely made it before her sister was on her again.

Darting to the side, Beka thrust upward, trying to catch the Nietzschean high, but her attack was blocked and she found herself too wide open. Had Tyr seen this, she never would have gotten to hear the end of it. A quick dodge downwards saved her from having the fight being over too quickly for her liking.

"What's the matter, sis'? Did your darlin' High Guard never show you this?" Tabea nearly growled, all lady-like traces gone.

Beka didn't reply. For one because 'her darlin' High Guard' never showed her much when it came to force-lances, mainly though because the few things he had shown her, had involved very focused – and highly successful – attempts to slash his opponents' through. So that was what she was going to do. She tried to strike from the right, then spun around herself and hit from the left. Tabea met her hit for hit, her blows just as fierce as Beka's, trying to push her back. She let it happen for a few steps, but then rushed back forward with a low sweep at the Nietzschean's legs, then going for her throat when she was blocked there.

The battle went on and on, her strength giving Tabea an advantage, but one that Beka managed to outbalance by dictating the pace of the fight. True to her former teachings, she never allowed herself to be backed down too much in the defensive, never allowed herself to run out of options. She kept herself on the offensive, sharp, hard, aggressive, pressing on and on in a brutal onslaught, that drained her muscles, but enhanced the battle-frenzy she was acting under.

None of them knew exactly when it began to dawn on Tabea that perhaps this time she'd tried to bite off more than she could chew. When it did, however, her resistance intensified, but it was by now just that: resistance. She started to react. A few times she attempted to regain the upper-hand, to force poor choices on Beka, but that only led to her wasting her energies. No-one forced any kind of choices on a Beka on a battle-high – let alone poor ones. Especially not poor ones. Beka Valentine in such situations always saw all options, all choices – and when she didn't like them, she just made new ones.

And then, quite suddenly and somewhat unexpected, it was too late for Tabea Musseveni to gain anything of value from her latest insights anymore. Beka's force-lance embedded itself into her left shoulder like a knife in soft butter – and sliced diagonally through her all the way down to the right hip. The Nietzschean was dead before she hit the deck, while a heavily breathing Beka in one fluent move redrew the lance and pointed it straight ahead at the Command doors sliding open to reveal the for once speechless Paul Musseveni staring down at the lifeless body of his daughter.


	76. Chapter 75

**Chapter 75**

Her hand and arm shot upwards, pointing rock-steadily to the Command doors sliding open.

"There you are," Beka hissed. "I was wondering what it would take to turn over the stone you're hiding under…" she said – or meant to say, but her words died on her lips midway through the sentence. The old man emerging from the bridge was spent, broken, without weapons… And not paying her any attention at all. His eyes were glued to the body lying on the deck, twisted unnaturally along the slash that had cut through even the backbone amidst a still growing, puddle of blood.

Paul Musseveni took only two steps before the icy voice of the blonde woman finally managed to stop him.

"Hold it right there!" she ordered. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I… I want to… check on Tabea."

"You can check on her from where you're standing. Or better yet, you can spare yourself the trouble. She's dead."

"She is my daughter."

"She _was_ your daughter… I said: stay where you are."

The old man lifted tired eyes from which all irony, defiance and mockery had disappeared – for once. He came to a halt, though, and spread his arms in a help- and defenseless gesture.

"I only want to say my good-byes to my child, Beka; surely you can understand that."

She scrutinized him through narrowed, cold eyes, but gave no hint on whether or not she was inclined to allow him to step any closer.

"Did you love her?" she asked after a while in a low, dreamy voice that contrasted sharply to both her stance and her expression.

"What do you think?" Musseveni retorted, his tone as tired and defeated as his whole posture seemed to indicate. A thin smile twisted Beka's lips.

"That love is merely a trick of our DNA?" she offered. He shrugged.

"A powerful trick…"

"Ah…" the blonde nodded knowledgably. She took one step closer to him. "Does it hurt?" she then wanted to know, a flick of her wrist indicating the body at their feet, while her head got slightly tilted to the side. The man mustered her somewhat unbelievingly.

"Yes…" he answered her at long last, still hesitating.

The oblique eyes opened widely, pouring iciness all over the already stony face.

"Good."

Her reply didn't sound mean or petty, not even satisfied. Just matter-of-factly. Paul Musseveni's face almost fell apart.

"I…" He was at a loss for words, apparently. "What happened to you, Beka?"

"You happened," she answered simply. Her left hand nestled behind her back, then came up front holding a pair of handcuffs. She threw them at him, and he caught them in the air. "Put them on," Beka ordered. He obeyed and bent a hand behind his back… "No, in the front; I want to see them." Musseveni followed instructions and cuffed himself. Her eyes barely leaving his face for so much as a fracture of a second, Beka nodded. "Fine. You may approach her."

"Thank you," the old man muttered, swiftly moving forward. He had not advanced for more than three steps when Beka's foot shot forward and kicked away and safely out of reach the forcelance that had been dropped by Tabea and was lying on deck right next to her. Musseveni stopped in his tracks and his head shot upwards, his eyes shooting daggers at her in spite of all visible attempts to control his fury. A broad grin split the woman's face almost apart.

"Oh yes," she murmured softly. "Fatherly love. How touching…"

He stood motionless, just staring at her.

"I _did_ love her. I still do. That doesn't mean…"

"It doesn't mean that her death changes your need to survive at all cost," Beka interrupted. "I didn't expect it to. In fact, I didn't expect to find you here without a weapon. How… thoughtless of you."

"That's only because _I _didn't expect to find _you _here at all," the old man replied sourly.

"No?" She sounded genuinely surprised. "I would have expected you to know as soon as the attacks started that I am around."

"Around, yes. Onboard, no. How did you find me?"

"Oh, please, Paul! Give me some credit. It was the only ship on the run. Where else would I find you? You and… Mommy? I mean, isn't this what you're both best at?"

"Ah, yes. Poor little Beka. Abandoned at so young an age and still looking for the loving embrace of a family…"

"Not quite. That's not why I'm here…"

"No, you're here for Hunt. Well, sorry to disappoint you, you've wasted your time."

If possible, the cold face in front of him grew even colder.

"I'm listening, Paul."

"Yes, of course you are. If it weren't for that, I'd be dead already, wouldn't I? Ah, but to be able to see those beautiful Commonwealth principles at work from up close! What a sight!"

She withdrew a few steps and watched him with curiosity.

"I'm going to try and take you back with me to Commonwealth space, just so you may find an opportunity to explain to me this insane hate of yours towards the Commonwealth. You knew it of old, when it was still strong and vibrant – and from all I heard, you must have hated it then. I do remember you hating even its memory, long after it was gone. And it's obvious that you hate the new one, too. It's… disturbing…"

"I could explain it to you…"

"No doubt, but you are not going to do it now. Come on, let's move," Beka Valentine ordered him curtly.

"Where to?"

"Don't play the fool. Med-deck…" She extended her forcelance. "You go ahead, with your hands above your head, where I can see them."

"I'm an old man, Rebekkah. Aren't you overestimating me a little?"

She merely laughed harshly, the lance jolting forward and pushing him strongly between his shoulder blades.

"You'd rather have me underestimate you the way you underestimated me, right? Not likely. I said: raise your hands above your head where I can see them or, Divine help me, Paul, I _will _cut them off!"

The old man looked back at her, something of the old, ironically cold gleam back in his eyes.

"Indeed, like I said…" he softly muttered. "Such lovely ideals."

"If it's ideals you wanted, you should have stuck with Dylan. He's the one big on those."

"Not anymore, he isn't," Musseveni shot back at her with a grin, obviously expecting a harsh reaction, some move that might have opened an opportunity for him. The woman surprised him though, withdrawing another two steps and calmly looking at him.

"Let's go, shall we?" she told him again, her hand invitingly motioning him over, her tone almost soft. The man's face darkened again as he reluctantly (and painfully) raised his cuffed hands above his hand with one furious look in her direction before turning around to stalk out of there. "What, no desperate look back at the remains of your… 'beloved' daughter? Ah well, I understand that. After all, she lost."

* * *

There was no way around it. She had search every inch of the impressive space that consisted the medical bay of the Nietzschean vessel, and it was empty – well, as empty as medical facilities could be with Paul Musseveni around. There was evidence of experiments all over the place, but the only room that contained stasis capsules held no trace of Dylan.

In the middle of the main room, Beka Valentine was fuming, glaring down on a Paul Musseveni who was staring down the long end of a force-lance.

"Where is he?" she growled lowly through gritted teeth.

He grinned.

"Hunt?"

"Don't play games with me."

"He's not here."

"I can see that. Where is he? And don't even bother to tell me that you left him when you fled."

"My departure was… rather rushed, you know."

"Paul…" she warned again.

"He is… with your mother, my dear," Musseveni stated. "Before you ask any further in that insistent way of yours," he elaborated, hinting at the forcelance, "they're in hangar bay five. And if I don't join them within the next 30 minutes, she will eject the stasis capsule holding the precious captain into space and depart."

To his surprise, Beka just grinned down on him.

"What, running away from the ship she ran away with already? And depriving herself of a… living gold mine? The very things she would need to consolidate her position once she gets to… wherever she wants to get? I don't think so…"

"We… had but very little time to perfect our plans."

"You're stalling. You had enough time. You knew what was happening the very first second the shock wave hit the system…"

"Of course I knew," he snapped back. "There aren't many people around with the power to destroy an entire planet and destabilize a whole system while attacking with a mere handful of ships, no matter how large."

Beka mustered him closely, clearly debating with herself whether or not she should enlighten him. And then, rather abruptly, she made up her mind.

"We didn't destroy your outer-planet," she informed him brusquely.

"You didn't? But the shock wave from the explosion…"

"The planet itself was destroyed by a shock wave. It's a miracle that any of us is still alive to tell the story."

The man still looked puzzled. "What shock wave then? Where did it come from?" He got nothing but a mild smile as an answer. "Dammit, Beka, what the hell have you done?"

"Not much," she finally deigned to respond. "I… merely flew us all here – without your damned flash-bots. The rest…"

"Without the flash?" he interrupted her, his eyes narrowing in sudden interest. "You're lying."

"No, I'm not. I had help. You can book it down to more Vedran… ingenuity." She wouldn't have thought it possible, but his eyes narrowed even more. "Careful," she cautioned him mockingly. "you might be blinding yourself…"

He smiled appreciatively at that and opened his eyes wide.

"More Vedran ingenuity, eh?" he echoed. "More Paradine or yet another Route of Ages or…" He nodded in understanding upon seeing Beka shaking her head slightly. "You won't tell me, right? Pity, you know…" he then added in a conversational tone. "You and I, we would have made a great team. With your ability to… gather interesting gadgets and mine to put them to good use…"

"Speaking of gadgets," Beka interrupted him, "get up. If Dylan is in hangar five, then that's where we're going."

"She'll know, you know… Your mother is pretty good at keeping things under control. If you bring me there at gun-point, she'll know – and take precautions."

"Like what? Stand there with a gun to get me – or order her pilot to do it? Or take off earlier? I think we already established that she won't do that. Besides: you and her and all those precious few Nietzscheans you took along – where do you think you can go?"

"Things got better, Beka, much better since you last flew me through the wormhole. My pilots are meanwhile really good at it. I had plenty of time to take care of things, you see," Musseveni told her, scrambling to his feet.

"How much time?" she wanted to know.

"Years…" He had to chuckle when her face got somber. "Yeah… _More_ years the good captain spent taken out. I often wondered how he'd have felt about it, if he were to know."

"Well, why don't _you_ tell me? After all, you are – unless I take you with me – pretty much in the same situation…"

"What do you mean?"

"The shock wave," she explained in a candid tone. "It was not my doing, but Harper's. Pity you two had such a bumpy start… He's really bright, you know. The things he can come up with easily match Vedran ingenuity any time."

"You have my attention. What did your bright Mr. Harper do?"

"He came up with a gravity converter that opened the tunnel or wormhole or whatever it was when he wanted it to open, let me pass through, sent some pretty missiles he's been in love with for years now into it sometime later and then reversed gravity and made the damned thing collapse. Whatever that thing was: a loophole made by Vedrans, a wormhole, some… odd slip-portal or other – it won't open again. Ever. You are stuck here."

He had come to a halt as they had reached the locked doors of their destination, and was now staring at her.

"You're lying."

Beka shrugged.

"Often, but not now."

"It would mean that you're stuck, too."

"Not necessarily. Like you said, I'm good at gathering gadgets – and keeping them. Far better than… my late sister, for instance."

There was a flicker of hate running across his features and he let his arms drop, that he had during their walk held obediently above his head. Beka raised the lance again.

"Don't do anything foolish, Paul… I don't want to kill you, but I will if you choose to try a trick or two on me."

"Don't worry. I did notice the evidence of your reluctance to kill on our way here."

The young woman shrugged anew.

"Yeah, well… Tabea, your Nietzschean off-spring… and mine, come to think of it. I didn't kill them all, some of them managed to kill each other in friendly fire, some I took out using some of Harper's smart toys… An enlightened Nietzschean once said that it's a pity that master-race of yours doesn't value genetically enhanced brains as much as they value physical perfection."

"He might have had a point…" Musseveni conceded, but his response was cut short.

In that precise moment the doors to the hangar slid apart and fire was opened on them. In an attempt to use the momentum, Paul Musseveni threw himself at Beka, hoping to somehow both incapacitate her as well as use her as a shield against the plasma shots. He was too old, though, and no longer fast enough for what he had in mind. Realizing what he was trying to do, Beka darted to the side he was coming from, managing to end up behind him. A shot caught him mid-chest – and the old man fell to the deck in a heap. Much like his daughter before, he was killed on the spot.

Behind him, on her belly and pressing herself as flatly against the deck as she could, Beka firmly gripped with both hands the lance she had withdrawn during her fall and, switching to plasma fire, shot towards the spot from where she had seen the fire coming at her. The fire stopped and then there was nothing but a small grunt, followed by a slightly louder 'thunk', the characteristic sound of a body hitting the ground.

Crawling to the bulkhead and pressing herself against it, Beka slowly came back on her feet. She carefully moved towards the open doors and peeked inside. The place was not small, but not exactly huge, either – somewhere half-way in-between the hangars of the _Andromeda_ and the cargo-spaces available on the _Eureka Maru_. In any case, she could easily oversee the entire deck, with two Garuda-fighters on the left, a body lying slumped between them, and four different drop tubes on the right. One of them seemed occupied by a cylindrical crate. Next to it, a tall, solidly built woman was inserting a code into the panel encased in the bulkhead.

"I'd hold it right there, if I were you," Beka said, stepping forward with the forcelance aimed at the woman's head. The woman dropped her hands and turned around slowly. The rounded figure had been nothing like the delicate, almost transparent figure she remembered, but the heart-shaped face and the oblique eyes so much like her own, that took her in without warmth, but with something like approval and curiosity, brought back with a vengeance memories she had buried so many years ago.

"Or what?" the woman asked in a crystalline voice. Watching her both fascinated and mesmerized, Beka didn't answer. "There's nothing of value in this crate, not for you anyway. He is a living corpse. You take him out of stasis, he'll die within a few hours. Don't tell me you'd be willing and capable to turn on your own mother for… _that_."

For a few moments, both women measured each other, then Thalia van Oudekerk Valentine Musseveni shrugged and moved her hand once more towards the panel. The movement seemed to shake Beka out of her stupor.

"I told you to hold it."

The cold, distant blue-green gaze turned again towards her.

"And I asked you: or what?" the older woman replied. "You didn't answer."

"No, but you did, confirming that this is Dylan Hunt in that stasis cylinder in-there. Step away from him."

"Becky…"

"No, no Becky. I said: step away." The woman didn't move. Beka sighed, then powered up the forcelance to max. "I will answer you now: I just killed your daughter and husband and the small collection of pretty boys you had here. Before that I risked my life and that of others, among them Rafe's… You do remember Rafe, yes? You do!" she exclaimed when the woman nodded. "Go fish! How fortunate! Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes: like I said, I risked my life and others' to get here, and in the process I ordered the only way out of here for you destroyed. And even before that I started a war and put up a blockade that might, if it works, starve out an entire system or, if it doesn't work, plunge the Known Worlds again for decades into chaos. And I threatened to blow up a sun."

"That sounds like a lot of bad choices, dear, doesn't it? I fail to see, though, how it answers my question."

"I agree, an awful lot of bad choices. But it _does _answer your question: I did it all to get here. Which means that if you so much as breathe in his direction, I will shoot you, Mother. And I'll shoot to kill."


	77. Chapter 76

**Chapter 76**

They kept staring at each other, the older and younger woman, both measuring the other up in a strange, oddly furtive way – as though they were reluctant to openly admit their curiosity about one another. To her own surprise, Beka noticed that her mother's interest in her seemed nearly to surpass her own interest in Thalia van Oudekerk. She almost let a sigh escape her, thinking that whatever this interest might have sprung from, it did not bode well for her and hers. However, she quickly suppressed any display of emotion and lightly shook the weapon she was holding, motioning away.

"Kindly step away from the bulkhead, please." Beka was herself surprised at how both steady and unexcited her voice sounded. Her mother shrugged.

"Where to?"

"Just walk backwards until you are 15 steps away from anything you can touch. Keep your hands where I can see them. Good," she then approved as Thalia complied. "Now strip."

"What?"

"Strip."

The oblique eyes, of a greener shade than Beka's, narrowed, as a thin, appreciative smile splintered the slightly irregular face into hundreds of craquelled wrinkles.

"Are you trying to humiliate me?"

"No, I'm trying to search you for weapons without having to come any closer," Beka answered her readily. _Or touch you_, she thought, taking great care to not have her face betray how repulsive a prospect she found this. In an attempt to keep all of her emotions under tight control, she pressed her lips together to an almost invisible line. Thalia gave no signs of noticing any of the turmoil going on inside her daughter, but Beka doubted that anything really escaped her while her hands began to lazily unzip her clothes. When she attempted to bend down to touch her boots, Beka instructed her sharply to use her feet only to rid herself of her shoe wear, but other than that silence stretched between them until the older woman was standing there in her underwear.

"Shall I proceed?" she then asked, her tone ironical, but also a bit weary.

"No, that's enough," her daughter acquiesced calmly. "Now get five more steps away from the pile."

"Beka…"

"Do as I tell you." She frowned when Thalia rolled her eyes in mockery. "Dammit, woman," the _Maru_'s captain snapped, "cooperate. I said, I would shoot you if you give me reason, but that doesn't mean that I'd be enjoying it."

A small chuckle dripped from her mother's lips.

"Are you afraid I might haunt you?"

"Every single death I cause haunts me."

"Really?" Thalia exclaimed with surprised interest.

Stepping back and towards the panel inserted near the eject tube that the older woman had been busy with before, Beka locked eyes with her opponent, a look of slight disgust flickering over her face. She didn't deign to answer, though. Her gaze quickly moving back and forth between her opponent and the panel, she began instead to retrieve the cylindrical stasis chamber from the air lock tube. Her face closed down while she waited for the bulky pod to reappear. As soon as it was fully emerged, a soft, barely audible sigh escaped her lips.

Her weapon unwaveringly aimed at her mother, her eyes still sternly watching the older woman, Beka carefully, almost gently placed a hand against the metal casket. Her jaws began to grind lightly at the coldness under her finger tips. She knew that the stasis chamber was hermetically closed – and that the coldness was only due to the material and no indicator for its content. She knew that the iciness she felt invading her whole being through her finger tips was imagined. And yet she couldn't help it, just as she couldn't help from having her face grow paler.

Unlike the stasis pods onboard the _Andromeda Ascendant_, this one displayed no transparent cover, as Beka noticed from the corner of her eye. She felt oddly relieved. The whole moment had a strange, somewhat surreal note about it. Here she was, facing her long lost mother at gun point, after some gruesome fighting that had resulted in more deaths than she could remember to have ever caused at once in a long time, on a Nietzschean warship, surrounded by Nietzschean enemy vessels, in a hostile system, with the _Eureka Maru_ and people dear to her waiting to hear from her… She knew what the stakes were, she knew what she had to do next – and yet, all she could focus on was the thought that there, right under her finger tips lay Dylan… And that she was glad that she couldn't see him.

"You're afraid," her mother's cool voice disrupted the repetitive turmoil of thoughts in her mind. "You're so afraid of what awaits you in that pod that you can't even so much as throw a glance at it…"

Beka swallowed dryly before replying, although she knew it to be a mistake to engage in a conversation with Thalia at this point. Still, she couldn't help it.

"Am I right?" She was aware that her voice sounded raspy, shaky, revealing quite accurately how she felt – as she could see it confirmed in the aloof expression her mother's face adopted instantly.

"Right about what?" the older woman asked her, stalling.

"Being afraid," Beka answered, almost pleadingly. To her surprise, the statuesque features in front of her seemed to soften slightly, but the impression passed too quickly for her to be certain about it.

"He's… bad," in the long end Thalia informed her, hesitatingly. "I doubt that anyone can help him. We tried to preserve him, Paul had high hopes… But even he couldn't succeed. Your captain's body doesn't react the way it was expected to. His cells seem to have retained the flash-bot pattern. When we tried to treat him with nanos, he OD-ed. Still, it helped with the burns, with some of the other injuries. However, we had to wash the nanos out of his body again. His femoral artery was… literally shredded, and nobody can help with that without using nanos. You take him out of stasis, he'll bleed to death within hours. I'm sorry."

"I'm sure you are."

"Beka, harming Dylan Hunt was not a main objective…"

The young woman interrupted her with a snarl.

"Don't even bother!" she snapped back. "Whatever the 'main objective' was: Paul, at the very least, had to know that Dylan would not idly stand by and let his XO be captured. Maybe getting Dylan was just a bonus, but it certainly was not one of negligible quality. Not to Musseveni, anyway."

"Even your capture was not a main objective…"

"Yes, I'm well aware of that. I was just a means to an end; and when you people lost me, having Dylan turned out to be the one lucky break you needed."

"It's not that simple…"

"No? You said it yourself: You tried to 'preserve him…' Like he is nothing more but a piece of dead meat you freeze up to use at some point later."

"Didn't you listen to me? He _is _a piece of dead meat… " This time Beka didn't interrupt verbally, but Thalia prudently stopped herself mid-sentence. Her daughter's face had – if possible – paled even more, her eyes narrowed to glittering shards of ice, while the knuckles of her fingers curled around the force-lance turned white. The older woman crossed her arms over her chest. "Are you going to shoot me for telling the truth? Yes, you were nothing but a means to an end, yes, Dylan Hunt was nothing but a means to an end, but what if it is a worthy end?"

"Spare me," the blonde retorted, withdrawing again slightly towards the bulkhead, where she jammed her elbow forcefully into a small communicator device. Her force-lance still aimed at Thalia, Beka pulled out some cables from behind the panel, beginning to rewire them in a different way with a nanowelder she had detached from her belt. She was quick about it, with precise, self-assured movements, although her eyes kept checking on the older woman every other second.

"What are you doing?" Thalia inquired.

"Putting up a secure channel to call in the _Maru_…" Beka readily offered the information.

"The _Maru_? The _Eureka Maru_? You came with the _Maru_?"

"What? You thought I walked here?"

"No, but… I would have expected…"

"What? The _Andromeda Ascendant_? She's too big. Your ship is just about the biggest one that could make it more or less unharmed through something like that wormhole used to be. Something even smaller – like the _Eureka Maru_ – is even better. It's also better suited for whatever awaits us when we take… the scenic route back."

"I overheard your conversation with Paul: you really destroyed the wormhole?"

"My engineer did – from the other side. I merely survived it."

A thoughtful look appeared on Thalia's face.

"You're rather forthcoming with information…"

A cocky grin flashed up on Beka's face as she once more checked on her mother. "What did you expect? I'm a well-bred, very polite, highly forthcoming person."

"Indeed. And I see that you also inherited your father's technical skills."

Beka shrugged.

"Partly. Partly I picked up – no, not quite. I was _taught _a lot by a friend who just happens to be a freaking genius."

"Must be tiring…"

Finishing reconnecting the wires and attaching a tiny communicator to them, Beka began inserting a code.

"What?" she asked, her tone casual.

"Spending your life surrounded by geniuses…"

The young woman looked at her, her gaze pensive.

"You should know…" she ventured in the end. As Thalia opened her mouth to answer her, there was though a crackling sound coming from the communicator.

"Beka?"

"Hey Doyle!" she greeted her crew-mate. "I just sent you the coordinates. There are two landing bays. I'll be opening up the hangar next to us for you. Once you're in, come join me."

"Aye. Is everything all right at your end?" The question sounded hestitating.

"I don't know yet. For now, it is under control, at least… How are things with you?"

"Fine."

"With all of you?"

"All present and accounted for, Captain."

"Good, Valentine out."

"Strange," Thalia van Oudekerk reclaimed her attention as soon as communications ended. "I think I'm looking forward to see the _Maru _again." She chuckled upon noticing her daughter's suspicious gaze. "What? You think I'm trying to manipulate you?"

"Oh, no! Whatever could possibly make you think that I might?" Beka's sarcasm was cut short once her eyes came once more to rest upon the metal casket. She moved closer to it again, again placing her free hand against it whilst leaning against the bulkhead. Her gaze however returned to where her force-lance's aim had never wandered off from: Thalia. And stayed there. One more time, silence stretched out between the two women, solid, dense, concentrated. It bore no rest, no calmness. Neither did it bear a challenge, though. And maybe… Maybe therein lay the challenge: in the perfectly cold, perfectly barren void of everything, at least on one side. Much as she searched, Thalia van Oudekerk could not detect any sentiment at all in her daughter's eyes. Not even hostility or any form of curiosity. After the amount of empathy she had betrayed when Thalia had informed her about Dylan Hunt, this complete lack of emotion was slightly disconcerting. In the end, the older woman gave in.

"I'm surprised," she began.

"Are you?" Beka replied. It sounded completely uninterested.

"Yes. I would have expected you much sooner."

"I had to prepare…"

"I don't mean now – or here. I mean at all." If she had hoped for a more vivid reaction, Thalia once more saw herself disappointed.

"You mean… after you left?"

"Yes. After you grew up, at least. And your father died."

"I wouldn't have known where to find you…"

"Nonsense. I wasn't hiding. You knew who and where I was, that I had become a senator in that new Commonwealth of yours. Your brother tried to see me several times, you know…"

"I never found it as difficult as Rafe to earn myself a living. He did come to see you about money, right?"

"How do you know?"

"Oh, call it an educated guess. Whenever Rafe seeks me out, it always involves some "getting rich quickly"-scheme – and _me_, he loves."

"You assume he doesn't love me?"

"I assume that nobody's loved you ever again since dad died…"

Thalia tilted her head.

"I did get myself a new family, you know…" she offered softly.

"Yes, I know," Beka confirmed. "They're lying dead in the corridors. You didn't as much as blink. Maybe I'm assuming too much, but this type of… affection is normally responded in kind."

An acknowledging smile appeared on Thalia's lips as she casually shrugged.

"Paul and me, we were never… proper family material. And poor Tabea – I think she must have inherited that. You… are obviously taking more after Nat."

"True," Beka dryly admitted. "I'm intrigued, though: why'd you think that I should have sought you out?"

"Didn't you want to know why I left?"

"I simply assumed it was because… you weren't proper family material?..."

"And what if there was more to it? Was that really enough?"

"No. Enough was that you weren't there anymore. The finer points paled somehow when held against this fact."

"Ah, but you did realize that there must have been some finer points, after all… Beka, do you know of your father's history with me?"

"I know some bits and pieces that I remember, I know what dad told me reminiscing over you in clear moments – or cursing you in his flash-induce diatribes. After you crawled out from under the stones again, I did my best to reconstruct some more of the puzzle with the help of Rafe and Sid. Then I saw how the people you were with put Dylan on display like some prey they had hunted down. And that was then definitely enough."

"So then, personal motives, loyalty, friendship, love… That's all very touching – and very grand, of course, especially when compared to my own, selfish ways; but what if behind everything I did, every action I took was some other motive, too? One maybe even grander than yours?"

"You mean: like breeding Paradine?"

Thalia's eyes widened.

"You know?"

Beka nodded. "I know that Nietzscheans are a byproduct of an attempt to breed Paradine. I know how the Lambent Kith came about, I know why Paradine are needed, I know…"

"Then you understand," her mother interrupted. "We had to act the way we acted, Beka. It wasn't just for fame or power or the like. By endowing suns with avatars, the Vedrans created a menace like nothing known before. The Paradine are needed, and not just in small numbers. We need whole armies of them…"

"Oh, yes. Of course, I'm sure it's all for the benefit of the universe. Let me guess – in a moment, you'll tell me who you really are, or more precisely: what you are, and where you're coming from… That you belong to another time, another world, that I can't imagine what it took you to get this far… That all is nothing but a grand scheme in an ever grander scheme, that everything that happened to you, to me, to Rafe was necessary, that from Dad to Trance to Avneri to Dylan, it is all just part of something much, much bigger than us all… And then you'll do what they all do – from Trance to Uxulta to Marlowe to Flavin to Maura: argue how every mess, all suffering, the many sacrifices of good men and good places for the greater cause are worth it, because after all what is the life of one being against that of millions? And from one being you get to many more, then to whole planets and solar systems and entire galaxies that you deem to be justifiable losses when weighed against some ultimate goal or other. But you know what? I don't care. I just don't care about those arguments any more. Because even if you are right, even if all of you were right at some point: all those sacrificed and used and abused people and places – they weren't asked to join you, they weren't left a choice. They were merely considered disposable…"

"You're missing the point. I for one never thought…"

"Beka, we landed!"

"Damn'! Bad timing, Doyle. Mommy was just going to offer me a nice good-night tale."

"Sorry, I'll make it up to you."


	78. Chapter 77

**Chapter 77**

She slid down the bulkhead and came to sit on the deck as limply as a rag-doll. Tiredly, she let her head rest against the cool metal behind her. As she lifted her hand to rub across her face, she noticed her fingers trembling. Flying through Magog swarm-ships, fighting Nietzscheans in hand-to-hand combat, shooting at Ogami, firing deadly shots against the scum of the universe – and not once had her hands ever shaken. Not while she was freezing on ice-planets, or biting dust on Seefra, or drinking some jerk or other under dirty tables, or commanding full-scale fighter squadrons, not even while she was taking it out on Rev Bem during flash-withdrawal. But they were shaking now.

The waiting was getting to her. It seemed like she had already spent a lifetime here, in front of the locked doors to medical, pacing like a caged animal for hours before her legs had given out on her, while she was waiting for some miracle to happen on the other side. Except: miracles didn't happen, not anymore. They didn't happen for her, and they didn't happen for Dylan – not unless they made them happen.

Which he couldn't do anymore, and neither could she, because she didn't know how to make this kind of miracles, because no-one seemed to know, not even Trance. No-one but Jonah Draeger apparently, if she was to trust him, something she knew she didn't. Except: she had no choice, because without trusting Jonah, there would be no more miracles, not here, not on this one – which meant that there would be never again any miracles for her any more. Maybe she'd used them all up…

* * *

_Things had moved at an enormous speed after the _Maru _had docked on the Nietzschean vessel, the hangar bay flooded within minutes with everyone who had previously been onboard the old freighter._

_An impassive Draeger closely followed by Rafe had reached Beka and Thalia first; the amount of trust between Jonah and Beka's brother, for understandable reasons not exactly big to begin with, had been strained a lot once they had arrived in the Ral Parthian system. Raphael was on edge, expecting the Seefran to try… 'something'; what he didn't know exactly, but that was beside the point. So when the elder Valentine's eyes fell on Thalia, his gun seemed to make its way from the holster and into his fist entirely on its way. Beka didn't mind, since it spared her the necessity to keep an eye on her mother while briefing Doyle and Trance, who had followed the men suit._

_Both women had born a tense, concentrated expression on their faces, but while Doyle's eyes fell immediately on the stasis-pod and remained glued there like Beka's had been before, Trance, who still looked sickly pale and stricken, had seemed for a moment to almost recoil from it, averting her gaze like some sort of scared animal looking for an escape. It was then that she had first noticed Thalia – and the big, brown eyes had widened even more as they locked on Thalia's, that were scrutinizing her with an odd expression. It seemed almost as if the two knew each other, and both attempted to mask the reflex of recognition._ _Beka made a mental note of it, but decided to let it pass for now, kicking into action._

_She ordered Rafe to get Thalia handcuffed and bring her to the brig while continuing to keep a close eye on Jonah. Unlike her brother, she had her own reasons to believe that – in spite of his reluctance at having been brought along – he would cooperate and stay compliant. Still, where Draeger was concerned, she felt it was more prudent to be safe than sorry. During their acquaintance there had been quite a few changes of heart for him. Who was to say that there would not be some more?_

_Doyle and Trance had kicked into action, moving the stasis chamber along with Beka's help, towards the second hangar deck, to the _Eureka Maru. _At the doors, though, Beka had turned around to leave._

_"Where are you going?" Doyle had asked._

_"Command. I'm flying this baby back to the moon and hide us there."_

_"Why?" the blonde had wanted to know, frowning. "Why don't we just get the hell out of here?"_

_"We will. Once we've all had some rest – and you and Trance have checked on Dylan…"_

_"Why don't we keep him in stasis and check on him once we're back where we belong?" the _Maru'_s avatar insisted stubbornly. Her captain didn't respond, but merely stared at her wide-eyed and… Doyle tilted her head to the side, in a typical gesture, scrutinizing the other blonde intently. A fraction of second later, she merely nodded._

_"Aye, Captain."_

_Beka let out a soft, barely audible sigh._

_"Thanks."_

_Doyle nodded again._

_"I will inform you as soon as we've completed the check-up."_

_"Okay. Thank you. Trance?"_

_The girl, who had listened to the exchange impassibly, seemed shaken out of some odd sort of reverie._

_"Hm?"_

_"Are you all right?"_

_She smiled absentmindedly._

_"I don't know…"_

_Beka mustered she for a moment, than nodded._

_"We'll talk about it later," she promised, her tone surprisingly gentle. "Go now, see to Dylan, please."_

_"Aye…"_

_And then she hid the ship. And while she did so, Rafe showed up with Jonah in his trail… And with their mother. At Beka's inquiring glare, he merely shrugged his shoulders._

_"I'll cuff her here to the rail. I prefer to have her under my eyes." The quick glance he threw over to Draeger said:_ Both of them.

_Although she seemed not really pleased, she nodded, ordering the Seefran to check on all the ship's systems and Rafe to take over the weapons' station. Both complied, although Rafe first took his time to find a pole solid enough, next to which he made Thalia sit down, tying her to it._

* * *

_They worked in a tensed silence impregnated by Beka's obvious anxiety, each one of them concentrating on their respective tasks until soft swearing coming from Rafe interrupted it.  
_  
_"What's up?" his sister wanted to know._

_"I was trying to increase the shields around the_ Maru'_s docking bay, but apparently there's been a lock-down of the shields from the hangar-bay you were in when we came aboard."_

_"Figures," Beka snarled derisively. "She would have made sure that her position is a secure as possible, no matter what happens to the rest…"_

_"Seems to me that your brother is attempting the same thing," Thalia calmly threw in._

_The young blonde pressed her lips together, furious at having offered her mother an opening._

_"Shut up," she ordered her curtly. "Rafe, go. Take Harper's overriding codes and fix it directly there." He nodded, but hesitated an instant, eyeing both his mother and Jonah Draeger with unease. "It's okay. I can handle them both," Beka reassured him in a low voice, that left no doubts that she really meant it. Upon hearing it, her brother was convinced that she_ would _handle them both, if need be._

_He hadn't been gone for longer than five minutes when the doors to the bridge opened again, revealing Trance. As Beka locked eyes with her, she felt her limbs grow heavy, while her blood seemed all of a sudden to start pounding in her ears. She didn't have to ask, the stricken look on Trance's face told her all she needed to know – but still refused to acknowledge._

_"No…" she attempted to fend the realization off. Her voice creaked like dry wood, so she tried again after moistening her lips. "No, Trance. It can't be…" Although it had not gained more firmness, Beka's voice was rising as she continued in a pleading tone, without even giving the girl in front of her a chance to start explaining. "Trance, it can't be! Trance, I've seen you performing miracles, _particularly _on Dylan…"  
_  
_"Beka…"_

_"No! You've got to try! There must be something you can do! Divine, he crashed again and again after the Magog attack, and still you brought him back time after time and had him back on his feet within 12 hours. Trance…"_

_"Beka, listen to me!" The golden avatar had walked into the room and was now standing right in front of her captain, grabbing her upper arms._

_"Trance…"_

_"I said,_ listen _to me!" she repeated more forcefully. "I never 'performed miracles'. No-one does. You use technology at your disposal. Which is exactly what we can't do right now."_

_The two women kept staring at each other, until Beka finally blinked._

_"Okay," she breathed out, gently extracting her arms from Trance. "It's all right, I get it."_

_The avatar sighed in relief._

_"I'm sorry, truly, Beka, you can't imagine how sorry I am, but all our info was correct and there really is nothing we can do. I wish I could tell you something else after all we've been through to get here." She gave the blonde a checking look. "So: What now?"_

_"Plan B?" the_ Maru'_s captain retorted vaguely._

_"Meaning?"_

_"Take Draeger to medical and show him all the files."_

_"I'm sorry?" the man inserted. "What was that?"_

_Beka straightened herself up to full height._

_"You told me about Seefra, about what you did… had to do there, without our technology at your disposal."_

_The man's eyes narrowed._

_"You think I'll save your precious captain? Is that why you really brought me along?"_

_"Mainly," Beka admitted. "Although Rafe told me that your knowledge of Ral Parthia really came in handy, too."_

_"And now you want my help with Dylan?"_

_The woman looked at him with a stern expression._

_"Yes…"_

_"Why me?"_

_"I've seen you with him last time on the_ Maru. _And then there's Seefra. The way you helped yourself… Jonah, you may be the only one who can do it. Go to medical, study the files, think about it. Once we're back onboard the_ Andromeda,_ you can go work… It'll be a while till we get there, that will give you enough time…"_

_"No, that's not I meant. I may be able to help him or not, I can't say as long as I haven't seen what's really up with Dylan. But… why should I of all people help _you_? With_ him_?"_

_"Because you're at the origins of this entire mess?"_

_The Seefran laughed lowly._

_"Beka, are you just appealing to my conscience? My… better nature?"_

_She bit her lip._

_"What if I am?"_

_"Tough," he spat out at her. "I have no 'better nature', you should know that by now."_

_Beka shook her head._

_"Jonah, you already helped me before. You… helped me with Dylan, you helped Doyle bring us away from Myrmidon…"_

_"Yeah, well… She was very… persuasive…"_

_A flash of anger ran over the woman's face._

_"I assure you that I can be just as persuasive…"_

_"Oh, I know that all right," Jonah Draeger snapped back at her. "You see, that's just what worries me. Suppose I help you – and fail… I strongly suspect that then you'll have my head, no matter how hard I might have tried to save Dylan. And if I succeed – what's in it for me? We get back to Commonwealth space, I save your captain's life and… get a bigger cell for the rest of my life? Is that it?"_  
_  
The teeth dug deeper into her lower lip. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she was staring at him, her head tilted to the side._

_"What do you want?" she finally asked him, her tone quiet although the expression on her face looked to Draeger as indomitable as ever. "Do you want me to beg for his life?"_

_"He did for yours…" Beka didn't reply to that, merely containing herself to look at him straightforwardly. Jonah sighed. "Very well, Rebekkah. I want you to agree to a deal I propose. A deal you will stick to regardless of my success or failure in the matter."_

_"What – do – you – want?" she crisply scanted. "I give you my word. I even sign a contract with you, effective as soon as we reach Commonwealth space. _Andromeda _can…"_

_"No," he interrupted. "No Commonwealth space. No _Andromeda. _You want me to try save Dylan Hunt, I will. But I'll do it right now and right here."_

"What?"

_"I'll perform surgery on him. After that, regardless of the outcome, you'll leave here. I stay…"_

_"You're crazy. The Dragans on Ral Parthia…"_

_"Ral Parthia is a closed off system in disarray. Around here, I'm somewhat of an unknown element – in spite of being one of their… forefathers, if you so wish. Back in Commonwealth space I'm a convicted criminal, a man with a chip on his shoulder."_

_"But…" Beka swallowed, slightly shaking her head. "Jonah, if you're thinking that you may find here something of what you lost when Seefra went back to being Tarn-Vedra…" Her voice trailed off upon seeing the stubborn determination on his face. "Will Dylan be able to make it back in his state – provided you succeed?"_

_"I don't know," Jonah answered her truthfully. "Maybe, maybe not. That will be entirely up to him, I suppose."_

_It took her no more but a fraction of a second to make up her mind._

_"Fine. You have my word. Trance..."_

_"I know, I know... Take him to the_ Maru,_ show him the files..." the golden avatar replied in a monotone voice."_ _She stepped next to Jonah Draeger and lightly tapped his shoulder. "If you follow me, Mr. Draeger..." she then offered gently. On their way out, Trance threw Beka a look, long and weighing. "People, principles, rules, ideals... Mine - and_ yours,_" she whispered lowly as she passed her by. __"How many gambits are_ enough _gambits, Beka?"_


	79. Chapter 78

**Chapter 78**

_Trance's remark had been loud enough to reach Thalia's ears._

"_That's a very good question, Rebekkah," the old woman remarked in that insufferably distant tone Beka had already come to loathe. It always sounded like a scientist commenting on a no more than mildly interesting experiment._

"_Shut up," she bellowed back at Thalia._

"_Or what?"_

_Beka rolled her eyes. The permanent contestations coming from her mother were starting to get to her. Which was a blatant lie, of course. Everything coming from her mother had gotten to her from the very start and would continue to do so, no matter what the woman said or did. She draw air into her lungs, trying to control herself as much as possible._

"_Just… shut up," she then repeated, in a softer tone._

_Her mother nodded, but the merciful silence was not to be prolonged, no matter how much understanding the 'other party' displayed._

"_It's a fair question, Rebekkah. Even from me. After all, you not only crossed all my plans, killed my family, captured and cut me off from the rest of the universe. You cut off an entire system, went to war and nearly condemned an entire pride because of Captain Hunt.__"_

"_I crossed your plans because you were trying to bring down the Commonwealth__ - or everything it stands for. And I didn't kill __**all**__ your family," Beka added, with a small, cold smile. "Besides: even that I didn't do to harm you or them, and I sure as hell didn't do it out of revenge for Dylan. I didn't do anything because of him. At least not just because of him," she added in a weird impulse towards truthfulness.  
_

"_The Commonwealth and everything it stands for? What DOES it stand for? Why do you think that what it stands for is so worth preserving? You said you knew. You said that you've been told and informed. And yet I see you here, trying to uphold a structure that has brought nothing but misery and failure to the universe, being friends with one of those responsible for that…"_

_At last it seemed as if Thalia had managed to surprise her daughter._

"_Trance?" Beka inquired. "You really mean Trance – and you object to her?" She sounded incredulous._

"_You said you knew…" her mother repeated._

"_I know about the avatars, the Lambent Kith, the Paradine… I know about the Vedrans and the Route of Ages and how it's been used and misused unwisely by a lot of goons and lunatics over the past millennium or so. Paul Musseveni, to name but one, and – I suspect – you…"_

_A harsh, derisive sound escaped Thalia's lips._

"_Ah, yes – me! The bad, neglecting parent, the monster who left you and your brother to…"_

"_This isn't about me and Rafe. We… coped. It wasn't easy, but we came through. Dad didn't…"_

"_Right. Good, saintly dad who never set a foot wrong…"_

"_I didn't say that."_

"_That's good, Rebekkah. Because you would have been mistaken. I did what I had to do. If you really knew and understood as much as you claim to do, you would realize that. Your father refused to help me. Much as I begged and explained – for years by the way, he refused to help me, out of some mislead, ridiculous ideas about how we should try for peaceful solutions first, try to build up a democratic order, try to always talk first and shoot later, even if it meant that we risked not getting a later out of it in the first place. Neither your father nor your Dylan nor any of your misleading father figures ever understood that democratic solutions are not the way. And much as you might object to people like me and Paul: at least we knew that there once was a structure strong and durable and fast enough to solve everything thrown at it."_

_"You mean the Vedran empire..."_

_"Yes, I mean the empire. For all its faults..."_

_"Exactly, its faults. Because you see, Mother, for all of its advantages, the way I learned my history your strong, durable, felxible empire was also merciless and ruthless and unjust. And when you and your... 'partners' came up with that marvelous idea of your new 'super-race', and then yet another even more super one, they turned out just as cruel, shortsighted and aggressive."_

_"They are needed that way. You don't get to talk peace to golems you've created. You make them for their strength and afterwards it's either command them completely – or destroy them. The Nietzscheans were Paul's dream, not ours. But it came in handy, we thought."_

"We_?" The blonde's eyes narrowed. "So you really are one of them. You're Vedran," Beka said. It was not a question, in her voice there was no doubt left about her statement. Thalia shrugged._

"_I'm better."_

"_Oh yes, the famed mix between humans and Vedrans, superior to both races."_

"_Superior to all races," her mother insisted._

"_In everything, obviously - and that includes the obsession with genetical exellence. Then what did you need the Nietzscheans for? Cannon-fodder?" Beka further asked as the older woman looked sternly at her. "Seriously? You have created an entire race to throw to the wolves, you and Paul and the Vedrans and whoever else might have been in on this disgusting plot of yours?" She lightly snorted in contempt. "Finding out that your survival-bent creatures weren't as eager to fight your battles as you all expected, must have come as a shock."_

"_Well, we're working __on it," Thalia dryly replied. She threw her daughter a strange look. "Don't look at me as if I were some sort Nemesis, Rebekkah. This has nothing to do with Nietzscheans or you or Captain Hunt. It doesn't even have much to do with the Commonwealth, the restored or the old one. It is an ancient fight, born out of ancient mistakes and decisions made at a time when the Vedran Empire was still on its height. It only concerns the Commonwealth in so far as it is a fight that has been made considerably more difficult by all the confusion and turmoil it has brought about in comparison to the old, smooth ways in which the Empire used to be run."_

"_The old, smooth ways of absolute power exerted by some very few without any control, you mean? And that – correct me if I'm wrong – brought about exactly the mistakes you mentioned? I am not impressed. Neither by the mistakes made nor by the solutions offered – and certainly not by your results so far." She weighed her mother in silence for a couple of seconds, a scrutiny that Thalia seemed to bear in a thoroughly detached manner. "How many of you are there?"_

"_What do you mean? People in this system?"_

"_No, I mean: how many of you 'initiated ones' are there in on this crazy scheme?"_

"_Some humans, some Vedrans, some Paradine or bearers of Paradine-genes, a few collectors, not many Perseids, Ogami, Than or any of the others. We always tried to keep our numbers manageable."_

"_I want their names."_

"_I bet you do, Rebekkah. I can also imagine what you want with them. It would be a mistake, though. We are the only hope the universe as a whole has against the Lambent Kith."_

"_You're wrong. Whatever the Lambent Kith may originally have been designed to be: they're sentient beings now. Which means that wiping them out of existence is the last resort. According to what you told me and what I knew before, you never contemplated any other possibilities."_

"_Like what? Talking to them? Reasoning and the like? Your father and your precious Dylan and many, many others tried that along the centuries. It failed."_

_A laughter escaped Beka._

"_Did it now? Then how do you explain it, Mother, that we are still here? It didn't fail. It worked, one century after another."_

"_At what cost?"_

"_Agreed. The price is high. We all should see to it that it gets lower. There are maybe a lot more ways that we haven't tried yet: more charm, more arguments, more persuasion, more brute force…"_

"_Well, that's what I'm trying."_

"_Neither the Paradine nor the Nietzscheans have helped, Mother. If anything, they only created more problems. Instead of having heroes protecting the universe against gods, we ended up with more and more superior beings of which none was up to their task. The Drago-Khatzov are only the last straw on the back of a camel carrying an already much too heavy a load of mistakes. None of what you people did was necessary. All of it was wrong and created only more mayhem and destruction. You will give me those names, down to the last of them. I will clean up this mess once and for good, and then I will find ways to contain the Lambent Kith enough to make them see reason."_

"_Like what, Rebekkah? Novas? Don't you think we tried? Don't you think that we also realized from the start that this would be indeed an option? The truth is, however, that we were wrong. It's not, not as long as the novas can only be used if people order them to be used. Something the likes of your dear Captain are utterly incapable of."_

"_But not the likes of me. And there are more like me around than there are like him. Besides: you missed out on everything I listed up before the brute force."_

"_It didn't convince me."_

"_Nothing will ever convince you other than sheer power. It's because of your ultimate flaw, Mother."_

_Mild interest was to be noticed on Thalia's features._

"_Which would be what, according to you?"_

"_You're lazy. You want quick, easy answers, simple solutions to complex questions and challenges. When they're not provided, you quit."_

"_That's something we all do."_

"_I don't."_

* * *

_It had quite effectively killed the conversation. Beka returned to her tasks and Thalia to her musings. And it was only when Rafe got back to Command that the uneasy silence was broken._

"_How are you two ladies coming along?" the tall man inquired with false cheerfulness upon his return. His mother didn't deem the remark worthy of an answer. Neither did his sister, at least not verbally, although her worried, weary eyes spoke volumes. Rafe stepped up to her and drew her into a one-armed hug._

"_Shields are fixed," he told her, his voice but a murmur. "So are all weapons' systems. Has anyone given you the impression that they might have found out about our hiding place?"_

_The younger Valentine shook her head._

"_And Mommy Dearest? Caught up on the past 25 years or so?"_

"_Not really. But we caught up nicely on the past 2500 years or so… She more or less lived through them, you know."_

"_Ah," Rafe dryly retorted. "And here I thought that she was not older than 60 standard years. Well, I suppose that's a start. By how many centuries does she surpass your Commonwealth relic?" As Beka didn't reply, he seemed to reconsider and bowed his head even lower towards her. "Maybe there's time later for you to enlighten me. Any word from sick-bay?"_

"_No." His sister's answer was barely audible. The arm around her shoulders squeezed tighter._

"_Beka, that High Guard fossil of yours is one resilient fellow. Why don't you go check on him? I'll call you, if something comes up. I can handle Command – and Mother."_

"_You're sure?" He had to laugh.  
_

"_No, but I'll do my best."_

* * *

_Checking on Dylan had proven more difficult than expected. And not an entirely good idea, either. After rushing through the doors of medical, Beka was stopped in her tracks at the threshold by the sight greeting her. Dylan lay very still on the bio-bed with Jonah, Doyle and Trance rushing around him with so much hectic, it seemed like they were more. There were bags of blood on poles with tubes running on needles on the backs of each of his hands or even stuck into numerous places at different parts of his body, with the three people carefully operating around and in-between the tuben. It didn't seem to help, though. Down at their feet she could see a red pool – it was as though the blood was going straight through Dylan._

_It took her a few moments to gain control of her voice, but even then she only managed to croak out a feeble "Trance?" – sounding pathetic even in her own ears. In an instant, the avatar was at her side, gently, but firmly pushing her out of the room again and letting the doors slide shut, before Beka had gained enough composure to protest, let alone resist. But then the struggle started._

"_Beka, I told you to wait."_

"_I did. For hours. You said you'd keep me informed. Now I find out that you already took him out of stasis and are… Actually: what ARE you doing to him?"_

"_I will inform you as soon as I know exactly where we're standing with Dylan."_

"_Why don't you know yet?"_

"_Because it's not that easy," Trance shouted at her, obviously upset. "We brought him out of stasis. He wasn't yet fully out and we were still checking on his injuries when he already started bleeding…"_

"_And?"_

"_And he still is," she said, "that's our main problem right now: he lost an awful lot of blood. I'm amazed he's still alive at this point. At this moment there is still no measurable blood pressure."_

"_But he will be all right, won't he?" Beka was desperate._

"_I'm afraid I can't tell yet. He was still alive when when I came out with you, that's all I can say."_

_The _Maru_'s captain could hear her blood rushing in her ears._

"_You can't tell me that… That after everything we've been through, with all that we have at our disposal, Dylan's gonna die under your hands from blood loss."_

"_Look, I know it sounds trivial, but… but it's not.__ Not with us out of options as far as most drugs, nanotech and MIS are concerned. The explosion hit his knee, shattering some of it – and the heat developed charred him to the bone in the vicinity… Which, all things considered, is probably a blessing and would have been even more so, had it gone further."_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_Well, something hit his femoral artery and ruptured... well, actually shredded it exactly where it turns into the popliteal at the back of the knee. This is what is causing this massive hemorrhage. We have by now stopped it, but… it's not that simple."_

"_You already said that…" Beka muttered, sounding irritated._

"_Look, we're doing the best we can, but there is some… Actually, there is a __**lot**__ of worry about further bleeding into his internal organs."_

"_Why? I thought the Nietzscheans tried to heal at least most of the burns and injuries - with some success, according to my mother. Did they miss so much? If not, why would there be internal hemorrhage?"_

"_Because the way things are, the only way to at least try to keep him alive was to give him a great deal of blood and lots of other fluids, too – to replace what was lost, to… fill up the pipes again, so to speak."_

_Trance sighed as the confused irritation grew on __Beka's face._

"_Well, we had to give him an awful lot due to the continuous bleeding. Normally we have nanos to monitor the process and act as some sort of enzymes, transformation agents, if you will, to turn what we pump into the patient into… blood of his own, but we can't do that with Dylan anymore."_

"_But y__ou could apply a tourniquet, yes?" Beka insisted further._

_The golden woman almost rolled her eyes. _

"_Yes, Beka, of course. Well, something similar, at least. We applied direct pressure to the leg, but you have to release that every 10 minutes or so, otherwise the lower leg begins to die. Up to a few minutes ago whenever we did that, the arterial bleeding started again. So, all in all, we had to give Dylan much more blood than his whole body normally contains."_

"_You sound as if this is a bad thing…" Beka said with a frown._

"_It complicates matters a lot. Large transfusions as such severely dilute some of his blood factors. It also causes a reduction in usable platelets. In combination, his blood's ability to coagulate is also reduced – considerably. It's something called dilutional thrombocytopenia. The factors we speak of are essential to keep the arteries from leaking blood and causing diffuse bleeding at various points in the body, especially in the internal organs like the kidneys. Which would be a disaster because frankly: any further bleeding might very well be more than he can take. It would require more transfusion, further reducing the usable platelets, leading to more bleeding, which eventually will cause a complete collapse of his system. So until his body can replenish the factors and platelets naturally, he is staying right on the edge."_

"_Will his body be able to do that?"_

"_Not if things go on like this."_

"_So what are your options?"_

"_Jonah said that we need… We need a graft to fix this."_

"_A graft? Wouldn't we need Harper to make one?" Beka asked._

"_No, a natural graft, and we have to do it all in once and manually. We take a piece of vein from his other leg and sew it into the artery to bridge the gap made by whatever hit him."_

"_But… but would that not cause further blood loss?"_

"_Yes!" Trance cried out, herself exasperated. "Yes, it will, but it's a chance we have to take. And I never did anything similar. And neither has Doyle, and all of our knowledge and precision won't help, because this is not just about precision and knowledge, but also about instinct."_

"_So?"_

"_So Jonah Draeger is on his own with Dylan…"_

* * *

That had been hours ago. In the meantime, Beka had waited a lot, checked on Rafe regularly, tried to contact the people in medical, who had time and again cut her off abruptly. And then, from one instant to another, she had simply resigned, giving up on everything really: on Dylan, on the hope that the doors to medical would open and reveal someone able to tell her something, on the fear that all they would have to say would be that…

The doors slid open, and out came a sweaty Jonah Draeger, looking completely drained.

"How is he?"

The question sounded strange in Beka's own ears. Calm, composed, somehow cool-ish. Maybe she had been driven nuts already by the long wait, she mused as her eyes glued themselves to the man's worn-out face. Jonah sighed.

"Surgery went well, if that's what you're asking. Now it's a matter of time and chances."

"How are his chances, then?"

"Reasonable."

It sounded somehow mocking. After what they'd been through, "reasonable" didn't sound reasonable enough to Beka and her face dropped. Noticing, Jonah offered further information.

"He is in poor shape altogether. Has been ever since the beating, in fact. But he is strong and a fighter, obviously, otherwise he would have died long ago, believe me. I think he's got a chance slightly better than 50%-50%. And I don't think there will be any brain-damage."

"Brain-damage?"

"Well, if at any point there was a lack of oxygen to the brain for more than a few minutes, there would be. Even though his body was very short of blood, his heart never stopped at any stage, as far as I know. But I don't know what happened on Myrmidon prior to the stasis, nor the few times they had a go at him on Ral Parthia. And from when I was in on this journey, whatever his heart had available to pump round him was… next to nothing, so there's always a risk."

"Will he survive slipstream?"

"I don't know."

The woman nodded, looking somehow petrified.

"Beka, did you understand what I'm saying?"

"You're saying…" She cleared her throat. "You're saying he might still die."

"I'm saying that his chances to survive are there… I'm saying that from now on all of it is up to Dylan. And Dylan only."

She nodded again.

"Right... Yes… Can I see him?"

"Yes, just… wait a few minutes. I will have Trance come and fetch you once we got him settled and the mess I made cleaned up somewhat."


	80. Chapter 79

**Chapter 79**

Although she knew her mission to be urgent enough, Trance was hesitating. Her hand went up to the panel opening the doors of the _Maru_'s medical, then fell down again, only to get up a second later. She didn't need to breathe, but gulped down some air regardless and finally touched the small screen.

The receding doors revealed a sight by now only too familiar. Next to the bio-bed, Beka was seated on an uncomfortable high stool, her elbows firmly placed on the mattress, her eyes locked on the face of the man laying there. She had already spent hours like that, not talking, not walking around, not eating, not drinking, not doing anything. Not touching Dylan either.

Trance sighed, remembering that other time when she – _they _– had been through this before. Only then it had been Beka stretched out, pale, unmoving and comatose… While Dylan, unlike the rest of them, who came and went, and talked to her and stroked her, was sitting next to her, mute, deaf to anything going on around him, his face and posture nothing but a stone-set memento chiseled in guilt and worry. He had not spoken to Beka, never touched her, just stared at her face until he could bear the stillness of it no longer, then averted his eyes, but that didn't last for longer than mere fractions of second, as if the only thing even more unbearable was letting her out of his sight.

Back then, Trance had vowed to herself to do whatever she could to keep such kind of grief and pain from them in the future, no matter the cost, although she had been aware that it would be a promise impossible to keep. As usual, she had been right.

So here they were again, in the same old, dreaded situation, albeit with reversed roles. Apart from that, however, there was an awful familiarity to the scene, in which once more one of her friends was lingering on the brink of death while the other was watching over him in helpless despair. No matter what they had tried, no matter how often they checked, no matter how much time Beka spent immobile at his side, Dylan's vitals were simply refusing to show any kind of improvement. _In time maybe_… Trance thought, with a frown. Time they didn't have.

Once more she went through the useless routine of checking on Dylan's vitals – that were barely worthy of the name. Once more, without diverting her eyes from his face, Beka in a low, still voice asked the meanwhile dreaded question:

"How is he?"

Trance sighed again.

_Fading_… would have been the proper answer to that. Instead, she once more opted for a more diplomatic approach: "There is no change, I'm afraid." Thoughtful, the avatar's deep eyes rested on the woman's immobile features. "Beka, you've been in here for hours," she then added. There was no response. "Beka…"

"I can hear you, Trance."

"I know you can. But I – we – need you to also react, to… to start… doing something…"

At last, the steel-blue gaze went up to meet her eyes.

"Like what?" the blonde inquired, obviously not in the least interested. "You told me time and again that there is absolutely nothing I could do for him…"

"Not him, but us… This… whole situation. You can't stay here indefinitely, just watching Dylan…" die… Trance's voice trailed off before she could have pronounced the fatal word. Briefly biting her lip, she then pressed on: "Beka, we can't just sit here for ages. It's only a matter of time until the Dragans will pick up on us. We need to get going…"

"Where to, Trance? Hmm? Where to? Slipstream? You know as well as me that for what lies ahead of us, Dylan is definitely not strong enough yet."

_Provided he'll ever be…_Trance thought.

"Maybe, but sitting around and waiting for the Nietzscheans to close in on us, isn't really improving his chances of survival. And in addition to that, it is endangering the rest of us, too. Dylan's recovery," the thought of 'if there will be one' hanging in the air between the two of them, unspoken, "will take months. While we can't afford to lose as much as one more day."

Beka sighed and briefly squeezed her eyes. Tarn-Vedra's avatar was right, of course. The thing was, though, that somehow she just couldn't have cared less. For weeks, for months, she had lived with the crushing guilt of having been the cause of Dylan's death. Then she spent more weeks, hoping without much hope that maybe – maybe! – there would be a chance to find him, get at least something, some small part of him back, find a closure, set her eyes one more time on his face. A chance to say good-bye. But now, that this chance was here, she found that she had all along deluded herself in thinking that it would be enough, that then she would resign herself to her (and his) fate and let go. Where there is life, there's hope. How many times had Tyr preached it to her? Too many times, obviously. Because now she believed it and clung to it with every fiber of her being. That still, pale figure laying motionless in front of her, that seemed so… fragile, so ephemeral, so… nothing like Dylan, _was _Dylan. Dylan on a ventilator breathing for him, Dylan with countless tubes that went into and out of him, Dylan with almost every inch of his right side, back and front, covered with light bandages drenched in anti-septic permeating the air around him with a sharp odor that chased away even the slightest memory of anything familiar linked to the man she knew. And yet he was Dylan, and he was alive, maybe only just, but still: he was alive. Unfortunately, no matter what she did next, she would either way end up endangering that tiny flicker of life still present in him. And that she couldn't bear.

"He looks… he seems so… small."

Surprised, Trance stared at her. Had Beka not heard a word of what she had been trying to tell her?

"Beka… I…"

"You know, it's really not the first time. Divine knows, it's not the first time that I see him like that. I've seen him battered, bruised, injured, hurt, weak, in pain, almost maimed beyond hope, but… I've never seen him… small."

This time around, it was Trance who had to squeeze her eyes briefly, pitying Beka for the realization – and envying her for it being the first time. Trance herself… She had seen Dylan looking small before. And Beka. And Harper. Rhade. And – at one time – even Tyr. She had seen them all injured and violated in their physical integrity almost beyond imagination. And every time each one of them had looked small. It was like a reflex with all organics: when hurt, they seemed to shrink, diminish, as if the bodies were trying to hide themselves away into some sort of strange insignificance. It had always touched her, made the urge in her to protect them, save them, help them at all cost grow to almost painful levels… With a shake of her head, she rigorously opened her eyes again, stepped forward and grabbed the shoulder of the woman in front of her.

"Beka, listen to me: it's just a matter of time until the Dragans find us. And then we'll all look just as small as Dylan does. Beka, they have hurt him, abused him and they will not hesitate to do it again, leaving him at the mercy of your mother, who – as we both know – has no mercy at all. The rest of us won't fare better. And then they will find the slip scout, they will start decoding it and searching for a way back to our universe. So unless you don't want all that to happen, I suggest you pull yourself together and fly us all out of here. Beka, I know it's hard, but sitting here won't save Dylan, just doom the rest of us. You need to get going, fell your decisions. Dylan… we can try to put him back in stasis to help him survive slipstream…"

"No!"

Yanking herself free from the hand lightly shaking her shoulder, Beka Valentine jumped to her feet.

"No? No to what? You won't go to slipstream?"

"No, we won't put Dylan back in stasis…"

"But, Beka…"

"I said no, Trance. You're right. I need to make our next move, we need to get going, but I won't have him placed back in a stasis-chamber. We know how our ill-fated trip to Tarn-Vedra turned out, we don't know what the routes we'll take will look like: anything can happen. If he is in stasis, what then will happen to him? What if we die and he survives? What if he survives for too long? What if he wakes up once more to… yet another new world? I won't risk putting him through something like that again."

Trance nodded. The woman in front of her gave her a hard look, but then nodded back to her.

"You and Harper decoded the slip scout. Have you already plotted out a course?"

"Yes, here it is," the bronze woman answered, holding out a flexi. "When do you plan to get going?"

Beka threw a look at the man next to them.

"Is there anything at all you could do to make him at least slightly more stable, prepare him somewhat for slipstream?"

"You mean: other than make sure he doesn't fall off the bed? I… I don't think so, but I would like to check him through once more before we get going, consult with Jonah, too."

"Okay. Take your time. I need to make some arrangements first anyway."

"What arrangements?"

The _Eureka Maru_'s captain didn't answer. Seeing her at long last lifting a hand to gently, if unnecessarily stroke a bang of light-brown hair away from Dylan's forehead, Trance thought her at first lost in thought for the moment. But when she straightened herself up and turned to walk out of medical without another reaction, Trance frowned.

"Beka, I asked you a question."

The blonde turned around.

"I heard you, Trance."

"But you won't answer?"

"Do you really need an answer?"

The seemingly young girl felt a rush of fear invade her. No, she didn't need an answer. Out of millions of possibilities available to Beka, this one had always deemed her the most probable. And yet, she had hoped that at least on this she'd be wrong.

"You can't."

"I don't want to. But I really don't see any other option to ensure our permanent safety."

"Nothing is ever permanent in the universe, Beka."

The woman shrugged.

"Okay. A more permanent safety?" she then suggested in a mildly ironic tone.

"At what cost?" Trance replied. "At Arkology, at Enga's Redoubt, at Hephaestus, Dylan…"

"Don't lecture me," the blonde interrupted harshly, "on whatever Dylan did or didn't do at Hephaestus or elsewhere. At Arkology it was you who made him hesitate: because of the slaves on the Worldship, because of those sheep not wanting to defend themselves, that you – for some reason – deemed worth dying for, for…" She stopped, breathing hard, and then her fist came down loudly on a nearby table. "Agh! Sorry, Trance, but… Fact is, that in all our time together there were only two battles Dylan really won: Witchhead and Samsara."

"Yes," the younger woman admitted, "and you know just as well as I do that both times it killed him a little to…"

"A little? Well, from where I'm standing right now, 'a little' is good, Trance. Because, you see: all the other times you cited… they did not kill him just a little, but almost. He did spare the Dragans at Enga's Redoubt, at least as much as he could. And look what it's got him. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take a good look at our route home and then make sure that Harper's babies will perform as intended."

"What about Jonah Draeger?"

"What about him?"

"You promised him you'll let him take his chances here…"

"And I will honor my promise."

"But, Beka, you intend to blast this whole system up and kill them all. That would leave him just as dead."

They locked eyes, both of them intense, serious, focused. It was a battle of wills, of principles and of fundamental values just like the one they had before in orbit around Tarn-Vedra. However, this time the outcome was different. At long last Beka sighed.

"I don't want them all dead anymore than you do, Trance. But I just don't know how to keep what Paul and my mother bred here from spreading like wildfire throughout the universe. And it will, believe me. If we can find our way back, so can they. I don't think that this would be a good thing for the Commonwealth or the other prides or the Three Galaxies. Nietzscheans are causing enough havoc already as it is. So: do you have an alternative? If so, tell me. If not…"


	81. Chapter 80

**Chapter 80**

"Beka," the golden being pleaded softly, "you said it yourself that what my people thought to have figured out regarding you and Dylan is wrong – on so many levels. It was you who argued that strength without mercy is no strength at all."

"I know what I said. And I stand by it. But just because the Lambent Kith was wrong on Dylan, doesn't mean that Dylan was right on everything else. I'm not blind to his faults, Trance. And I know exactly what Dylan's killer instinct – or, more precisely, his lack thereof has cost us all... Well, what it has cost even the universe, really. I think he knows it, too. And I believe that this is the reason why he always wanted me by his side: to counter-balance his weaknesses, the way he counter-balances mine."

"Only right now he can't do it, Beka."

The blonde's eyes widened and she visibly swallowed.

"No, he can't," Beka finally acquiesced. "And whose fault is that, hm? Strength without mercy, Trance, is monstrous. And the very reason why Dylan is dying. I am well aware that my feelings in this matter are determining my views, but I don't think I'd see things much different had it not been for what they did to him. For the last time: can you think of an alternative?"

"I… might…"

"Five minutes ago you came in here to point out that I'm wasting time that we don't have."

"Five minutes ago I still had hope that you don't plan to leave nothing but death behind you. I… Yes – there might be an alternative. There always is one."

"Name it. Because I don't see it, Trance. Left to their own devices, Devine knows what will come next from the Dragans here on Ral Parthia."

"Then don't leave them to their own devices."

"How am I supposed to do that? We can't risk leaving them behind with no control whatsoever. And we can't get enough of a fleet here to control them ourselves. When I make the journey back to where we came from – _if_ I make it back – I don't plan on returning, least of all with a fleet."

Trance stared at her, wide-eyed.

"Well?" Beka urged her on.

Tarn-Vedra's avatar kept staring at her, her eyes thoughtful – and wet.

"I could stay here…" she finally muttered. Beka looked at her as if struck by thunder.

"What?" she then asked hoarsely. "What do you mean: stay here?"

Trance shrugged awkwardly, as if herself in awe of what she had just said.

"You know: as in 'stay here'. Keep an eye on them, monitor the system…"

"What about Tarn-Vedra?"

"Tarn-Vedra has spent centuries without me."

"It has not spent them well, Trance."

"Nobody spent them well."

"Still, you cannot mean that. You'll be trapped here, locked in. What about the rest of your people? What about your sun?" Beka insisted. _What about us, Harper, me… Dylan?_ The question remained unsaid, but Trance heard it nonetheless.

"My sun is where it should be. And maybe you were right. Maybe it was a stupid idea of the Vedrans to try and cheat on the natural course of things right from the start. My 'people' and me… We never really had much common ground. Most of them developed in a way I couldn't approve of. We always disagreed to some extent, even before the likes of Azazel or Maura began to influence them. I think you know that. And I also think that you have already – knowing as much as you now know – taken precautions to keep them in check…"

Beka snorted.

"Precautions! What precautions can you take to keep tens of thousands of suns harboring populated systems at bay? You're right. I have instructed the Commonwealth to arm each of these systems with novas, but they know and you know and I know and I suspect that the Lambent Kith knows as well that striking out at the suns would cause billions of deaths and that therefore all of this is pretty much an empty threat."

"It's not if you really manage to make it back. They always singled you out because they believed you ruthless enough to go through with unpopular decisions. With you in charge, Beka, they'll believe the threat."

A bitter trace appeared around the blonde's lips.

"So that's what really makes me 'The One', yes? The fact that I am best suited to serve as a scarecrow, either for the Lambent Kith against the Abyss – or against the Lambent Kith while acting on behalf of the Commonwealth? Great…"

"Not a scarecrow. A shield. The... point of the spear, as Dylan would have put it."

Beka watched her gravely. To some extent, it seemed to Trance as if she was getting through to the woman in front of her, but on the other hand, there were shadows lurking in the smoked depths of her eyes, question marks and doubts that were not put at ease. _Maybe they can never be put at ease after everything that had happened, _the golden avatar thought with regret.

"What about…" in the end Beka ventured, only to stop short again. After a while, she shook her head and started anew. "What about Dylan and Harper?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that they need you, Trance. They've always needed you more than anyone else."

"Or so you told me before. I think we both know that this isn't the truth. Dylan needed me to need him, that's something completely different. And after Samsara even that was gone. He trusted me when there was no other option, but he never again trusted me out of his own free will, without being forced to by the circumstances."

Beka watched her with sadness. What was she supposed to say to that? That they all did meanwhile? And that, yes, all of their apprehensions about Trance (to put it mildly) had been fueled by Dylan's obviously growing ambiguous feelings towards… everything she had come to represent for him: Tarn-Vedra, the Vedran Empire, the Lambent Kith, the seemingly eternal struggle he felt himself trapped in. What could she possibly say to Trance's assessment?

_Yes, he does, _would have been the correct answer. _He does,_ _and it's eating him up. It's been eating at him for years and he doesn't know how to deal with it, because…_ Because what? Because, friendship and trust and loyalty set aside, Trance and everyone like her could turn super-nova at any given moment. Because when (_if_) it would happen or not, was something no-one could really control, apparently not even some of the avatars themselves. Because this kind of power could inspire awe in many and even trust in some few, but it certainly did inspire fear in all. And fear bred hate. And Dylan… Dylan had no talent for hating. Unlike Tyr or Harper, Rhade or herself – or any other being she had ever encountered – hatred didn't strengthen, it weakened Dylan. Because the engine that kept Dylan running, that gave him the much needed incentive to hang on, was not hope, not some moral ideal or other, but simply love. It had come late to Beka, the realization that Dylan's reason for everything, good and bad, was to be found in his capacity to love. And that therefore everything involving hatred left him crippled, with dangerous blind spots. That had been valid for both the Abyss and the Lambent Kith. Both' reasons for contemplating to destroy everything in order to annihilate the enemy was a concept so alien to Dylan, he couldn't believe it. Through it all, the Fall, the Worldship and its horrors, Arkology, Seefra, Dylan had just stood there fighting, arguing, begging, but never – not once – truly understanding. The same went for the Nietzscheans, including the two men who had delivered the greatest blows to the basic fabric of Dylan's entire being: Gaheris and Tyr. Both had in the end burned with hot, pure hatred born out of their overwhelming feelings of wronged superiority. Dylan, himself occasionally suffering from acute sentiments of entitlement, had however never managed to follow either one of his two friends down the path to the absolute rage that had in the end gained the better of both. Maybe that was because neither one had managed to force Dylan's hand into destruction. Trance, though… and her people… They had tried, more than once. And more than once they had succeeded, even though it always had been but partly so. Trance was right: underneath all friendship, gratitude and warmth Dylan felt for her, there had always been ever since Samsara a dark, cold - if tiny - spot of profound resentment, one of which Beka didn't know if Dylan could have helped himself against even had he wanted to.

None of this was something she wanted to share with Trance, though. Lucky her that her friend did not insist and just moved on to her other objection.

"And as far as Harper is concerned…" There was an almost unbearable sadness clouding Trance's eyes by now. At that, Beka acted on impulse and threw one of her arms around the smaller woman's shoulder.

"Trance, I know that he's always had trouble adjusting to the new you after you saved his life at Sinti. But that's because Harper is wary of any changes, especially abrupt ones he doesn't understand logically. Acceptance is not the way of a scientific mind like his."

"I know that," her friend replied, leaning into the embrace. "And I understand it, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear. Don't think I haven't noticed how he looked at me sometimes after I changed, how – despite his attempts to get things back to the way they had been – he never really allowed for our old intimacy to grow back, how…" She stopped, then continued, her voice thick and heavy. "How much of the old me he let flow into Doyle's personality…"

"He still loves you, Trance… And so does Dylan." The lie fell heavy from her lips, sounding false even to her. "We all do – in a way," she therefore added, in a desperate attempt to somehow make things right again and still stick to the truth.

The bronze girl shook her off, for the first time seemingly a bit angry.

"Yes, I know –_ in a way_. But neither one of you trusts me completely. Beka, I understand that it's difficult to trust someone who could annihilate you in an instant, but still… I've never ever really given you any reason to doubt me. I'm not Flux or Azazel or Maura. I am not my people, but me - and I always made it clear that 'my people' - that's _you_. I stood by you, I saved you, protected you as well as I could. And now all I am asking is for you to let me do it again. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I do. You're saying that I should let you sacrifice yourself for my peace of mind."

"No. I am saying that you should let me do what I do best: help you to help Dylan, the Commonwealth and the Three Galaxies. All that I am asking is that you trust me on this one. I can't guarantee that it will last forever, but… I can make this work long enough for it to feel like forever for you all."

Beka stared at her in silence.

"You think you can do that?"

With a deadly earnest look on her face, Trance nodded.

"Aye, ma'am."

"Don't say it like that, Trance. It isn't, it... _can't_ be an order."

"I… _want_ it to be an order. When I joined you, when you agreed to join Dylan, I promised myself to serve you all as the best crew-member you could ever wish for. And that's what I was, until the truth of what I really am transpired. Ever since though I have never again been so much as part of the crew, let alone its best part. Let me be that again, Beka…"

"Trance, if you do this, we may never see each other again…"

"I hope so. Beka, when you came to fetch me at Tarn-Vedra, you said that I too have to learn to make a gambit. I am asking you to let me do just that. Now: do you trust me to do it? And – can you do one yourself, for my sake if not for yours?"

She saw the tall woman weigh her. And she remembered well her ill-fated words to Rommie, the ones Beka had over-heard. She remembered what had come out of that, how Beka had taken them for yet another sign that to Trance and all like Trance they were nothing but puppets to be played with, just as she remembered how much – faced with Beka's fury – she had herself resented her friend for her rage. How she had played the game Beka was forcing upon her, determined to make her hurt just as much as she did. Seeing now the haggard, pale face of the woman who seemed worn down by what the last months had held for them all, she wished she could take it all back, get back to the way they had been before, cursing herself that for once her almost endless patience with humans had been proven _not_ endless, after all – by Beka of all people. Then again: it figured. Beka – with her flaring temper and passionate preferences kept in balance by razor-sharp instincts and a cold detachment reminiscent of the way her own people used to keep themselves apart from their surroundings – had been the first human to intrigue, captivate, fascinate her in a way no-one else had hitherto. She had not loved her at first, though, at least not in the way it had happened with Harper, who had instilled an almost instantaneous urge in her to look out for him, nor with that warm, but steady and calm passion she felt for Dylan. Of Beka she had at first been somewhat cautious, the woman's wildly contradictory, fierce, strong and almost haughtily proud nature making her less at ease with her than with any of the other organics she had come to know closely. In time though she had come to appreciate the pilot's undeniable qualities – that seemed to shine not just, but _especially_ in dire situations – more and more, until one day, all of a sudden, as she watched tears of despair running down Beka's cheeks while at the same she pressed the panel to send off the nova meant to destroy the Worldship and kill, along with it, everything and everyone the captain of the _Eureka Maru_ held dear in the whole universe, Trance became aware that she had begun to love her, too. She had no idea when it had started and she knew that her sentiments for Beka differed greatly from what she was feeling for Harper and Dylan. But it was love, regardless.

"Beka, please…"

The older woman let out a shuddered breath, then moved once more closer to the bio-bed upon which Dylan rested, her gaze dropping to his face. When her eyes came up again to look at Trance, they shone with a different brightness than before.

"Oh, what the heck…" she murmured. "I once promised Dylan that I'll learn to trust, even it were to kill me. I might just as well keep that promise till the end. What do you propose you do here, Trance?"

"I don't quite know, but I'm having some vague idea about where to start…"

"I'm listening."

"I've been thinking. You promised Jonah to let him free to take his chances in this system. Why don't I help _him_ with that? He… Well, you know... Within the parameters of his background and upbringing, he is not a bad guy, Beka."

"Whatever that means in a Seefran context," the pilot stated dryly.

"Yes, I know, but still: he is… basically decent."

"So you plan on starting to work on Ral Parthia and this new breed of Nietzscheans with Jonah's help?"

Trance looked at her shrewdly.

"Well, they are to some extent his own, so I take it he might feel in some way responsible for them."

Beka had her doubts about that, but she did have enough memories of Jonah's elaborations on Seefra about his plans for the entire system to indulge into at least a tiny bit of hope that Trance might be right. She nodded.

"It might work, Trance. But… it still is a long shot."

"I realize that. But in the long run, it might prove the best course. Back in our universe, he's got but to lose, but here… Here he might feel inclined to make the best of it. And with my help, he might even succeed. He doesn't have Dylan's ideals or statesmanship, and he doesn't have your sense of responsibility, but he is not devoid of principles."

Beka closed her eyes briefly. _Neither were Hitler_, _Stalin, Paul Musseveni, Constanza Stark, the Genites, Gabriel..._ she thought. The problem was that he was, just like Musseveni or Thalia, mostly inspired by the wrong principles. Oh, well…

"Okay, Trance. I agree. I'll miss you badly and – if he makes it through this – I'll be grilled by Dylan for having agreed to this deal. Divine knows, it's as flawed an attempt as any we've ever come up with, but it sure as hell beats total annihilation of an entire system."

The golden girl smiled at her. Beka smiled back, then turned around to leave.

"You coming?" she asked briefly over her shoulder.

"In a minute," Trance replied quietly. "I'd like to… say good-bye first."

The captain nodded curtly. Outside, as the doors slid shut, she paused for an instant, lost in thought, but then she shook her head lightly and proceeded to Command.


	82. Chapter 81

**Chapter 81**

„Jonah, we need to talk."

The tall, dark-haired man looked up from the console and turned around slowly, with care, towards the doors to Command. His eyes cautiously weighed the slender figure standing there, their expression matched by the one the other tall, dark-haired (if more slender) man in the room bore on his face.

"Beka…" Rafe attempted to throw in, but an imperative gesture of his sister's stopped him.

"Not now, Rafe," she told him dismissively without sparing a look. "Jonah, walk with me."

Draeger nodded curtly and walked up to her, following her out of Command.

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere," Beka replied lowly. "**We **aren't going anywhere. **I **am. You stay."

Coming to a halt, Jonah Draeger leaned against the nearest bulkhead. His posture was calm, but the look in his eyes betrayed him. The Commonwealth captain met his gaze straightforwardly, though – and much as he tried to read more in her eyes, the blue-grey shards revealed nothing beyond the words he had just heard.

"Just like that?" he finally asked her in a heavy voice.

The woman watched him intently, not averting her eyes, then nodded.

"That was the deal, right?" she then told him. "Gave you my word, remember?"

"And you intend to keep it?" Much as he tried, Draeger did not quite manage to keep surprise – and mistrust – out of his voice. A thin, slightly superior smile appeared on the generous mouth in front of him.

"I'm not my mother, Jonah. So don't mistake me for her. Or Paul… Or _you_, for that matter. Much as it may surprise you: I always keep my promises."

Although there had been only a mild reprimand in her tone, but no reproach, no reminiscence or trace of any old, bitter accusations going back to their past together, the man couldn't help himself against the sting he felt. All of a sudden – and rather unexpectedly to himself – he felt a wave of pure rage build up inside him, flooding him.

"Do you now?"

It sounded accusing all right. If anything, the expression on the woman's face became even more haughty.

"Don't," she motioned him in a low voice. "Just don't, okay? Believe me, you wouldn't want to go there."

"Why not? Why the hell not, Beka? Because **you **say so? Well, I've got news for you, lady: you don't _always _keep your promises. Not to everyone…"

"Not again…" the woman muttered. "Jonah, I don't have time for all of this right now. We've been through it before already."

"No, we haven't. I tried once on Seefra, but it wasn't the right time and you didn't even get it, because you needed Dylan saved. Then, months ago on the _Maru _and even later on Myrmidon, I tried anew, but it still wasn't the right time, because Dylan needed saving yet again. And now it's not the right time because – guess what? Dylan needs saving…"

"He wouldn't have needed saving at all, had it not been for you," Beka snarled at him.

"I don't care a rat's butt for Dylan Hunt. As far as I'm concerned he may live or die or…"

"How generous of you!" the woman interrupted.

"Just honest. No wonder you don't recognize it. Beka, nothing… **none **of this was ever about Dylan."

"Oh, let me guess… It was about me, right? From the start you never cared about anything else as much as you cared about me, correct? It had never anything to do with having the _Andromeda _secure your supremacy on Seefra, or your deal with Thalia and Musseveni bringing you back into the position of power you felt yourself entitled to, or with getting back at me on Seefra for having tried to protect a guy I had spent years of my life with from someone I had just met. Is that what you're trying to say?"

"He would not have needed protection from me, had you not lied. I saw red because you had betrayed me."

"He was my captain. You were a stranger…"

"Yes. A stranger you had pretended to love."

"I…"

"Don't say it, Beka. You said it before and it was a lie. Don't lie again, not now."

She just stood there, looking at him, seeming at the same time both furious and insecure.

"It… it wasn't… all a lie…" she at long last ventured, struggling for words.

"Yes, it was," the man reaffirmed once more, a bitter twist of his lips conveying his feelings on the matter even more clearly than his words did. "What you meant was that you were letting yourself fall in love with me – to fill up the gap Dylan had left in your life. As soon as he was back, though…" Jonah stopped, his eyes challenging Beka to contradict him. When she didn't reply immediately, though, he simply turned away from her with a dismissive gesture. The silence weighed heavy between them, until Draeger's voice cut through it again, his tone defeated, his words strangely soft. "I'm sorry, Beka. I really am sorry for every time I hurt you, for every time I hurt him, I'm sorry for every single emotion I ever had for you and because of you; I'm sorry for the joy, the love and admiration I felt, just as I am sorry for the jealousy and rage and hatred I felt. I'm sorry for you, I am sorry for Dylan, but most of all…"

"Most of all you're sorry for yourself," Beka cut in, interrupting him coldly. "You're sorry because what you felt – and did, the memories of it all will stay with you for the rest of your life, changing the way you used to think about yourself. You're sorry because you will spend said rest of your life here, stranded among those beautiful beasts you helped creating, struggling to find yourself once more a place you deem worthy of your importance, afraid you won't succeed, and with the knowledge that once upon a time there has been a woman in your life who turned you down. Because let's face it, Jonah: you weren't 'hurt' that I had lied to you about Dylan. Had that been the case, you would have accepted my explanation for it, which – by the way – was back then an honest one. You weren't _hurt_," she stated again, more firmly.

"How would **you **know?"

"I know because I've been there myself. Do you think you're the first man in my life who put his interests before me, who didn't spare a thought about the course of action he tried to force upon me? And ended up… 'hurt' when I refused to follow suit? Do you think that on the other hand I haven't myself tried to impose my will, my goals, my interests on countless men stupid enough to let me under their skin? Thinking I could control it how close, how deep, how far I would let things develop? Well, guess what: several times it turned out that I couldn't control it, that I didn't have the means to push the one or other beyond their limits. Some of them resisted – you among others. And when it happened… 'it' hurt: the realization that I had overplayed my hand, placed too high a bet on this or that guy, overestimated their fascination with me. My pride was hurt, Jonah, not me!"

"And you think this is what happened to me, Beka? You're wrong! I didn't try to control 'it' – as you so charmingly put it. I didn't try to control you. I just offered you a place by my side. I would have offered you… the world. In fact, I DID offer it to you. So what if that world was just Seefra? It was the only thing we had, the only thing I knew – and loved. The only thing I ever loved prior to you. I knew… I just knew that the Andromeda meant a chance to help Seefra, and that you were the key to the _Andromeda_. But had you not been that, I still would have wanted you by my side. In fact, I did when I offered you join me and leave Dylan and his ship behind. You refused, trying to make me believe that you did it because you could not agree to any of my conditions. But that wasn't the truth, Beka. In truth, the only condition that mattered and that you couldn't meet, was to leave Dylan behind. And your decision was felled the very instant my people brought him in and you set your eyes on him again. I had been nothing but a filler. And you're right: that would have hurt my pride, my hubris, my ego – whatever you want to name it – either way. However, as I had really fallen for you hard, it went well beyond that and it hurt 'me'. The fact that in the aftermath I nearly lost my life in the explosion, laying around for months trying to get back on my feet while knowing that in all this time you probably never again wasted so much as one single thought on me, was just the cherry on top. "

It was to some extent almost like an outer-body experience. Staring at the massive man in front of her, Beka Valentine felt as if she was somehow supervising a scene she was not really a part of, as if Jonah was telling her a story about some other persons, about a man she had never met - in love with a woman she had never met, either. She remembered, of course. She remembered the way she was living, surviving, getting by during those first months on Seefra, during the weeks with Jonah… She remembered the things he was talking about, but she had no recollection of really living through them. She remembered having thought to be in love with Draeger, but not what it had felt like. Everything involving Seefra back then was… pale, at best. Everything but one.

* * *

_At the beginning, she just drifted. The first month faded and ended and she could not sleep for many nights. She sent messages out, but there never was an answer. There never was… anything, really. So when the calls never seemed to get through, when nothing happened week after week, and there was no_ hello, _no _Beka – _and no_ Dylan... _something frayed, got torn up inside her. She thought that time would fix that, so she waited. Of course, it didn't fix. It just hid deep inside her and floated there, festering. _

_After a fashion she realized that she wasn't eating and drinking enough. Which was a good thing somehow, since she didn't have that much to go around in the first place. Still: she should have eaten more, should have taken better care of keeping herself hydrated. Somehow though, there was no will to continue. Not even a will to rage or fight or at least spill over into insanity. Only a bleak wish to end. So when she began finally looking for a way to reach those planets in that crazy system, which the_ Eureka Maru'_s instruments indicated to be there, she didn't really have her mind set to it, looked for them more like a hobby, like her life did not depend on it, like it was merely about finding maybe the place where Harper could be found. Where Rhade might have escaped to. Where Trance had maybe survived. That _Andromeda _could have reached. _

_And then she unexpectedly stumbled upon her shadow, and she **did **try to reach her, since she bore the promise of holding in her depths yet another shadow. The one shadow that she had ceased to name. Instead, she met Jonah Draeger. And strangely, while slowly taking in the dead ship that surrounded them, the finality of it all oddly lifted her mood, and her days became brighter. Not much, just a little, just enough to restart eating and drinking, and cleaning herself and the_ Maru _and working on the _Andromeda. _She went to bed at night and woke up in the morning and looked around the empty corridors and spaces, the lack of warm, soft bodies and talk and laughter not bothering, not even touching her. Jonah was there – and Dylan was… gone, thousands of light years and two lives away._

_But then a bit of life, of soul returned to the_ Andromeda _– and with it, so did he. He crept back into her thoughts, into the shadows of his ship. _Dylan. _His name was on the tip of her tongue, right under the surface of her skin, and when she was trying to power up one thing or other _Dylan _was there in the humming of the stuttering engines, the protesting circuits and in the sounds of her boots on the decks. _

_So she began again to skip eating, to drop things, get clumsy, but that didn't help much. _Dylan _was still there when she missed breakfast, when she was stuck in yet another failed attempt to reach_ Andromeda_'s core, when she grabbed her tools to repair a console, when she tried a new course with the _Maru, _when she ate dinner in front of the cold light of some strangely blinking stars she didn't recognize. And he was there when she slept with Jonah in the first officer's luxurious quarters, when the Seefran told her that she had captured his heart. All the while her own heart was a thousand light years away, screaming for the eyes of a man who refused to let himself be forgotten. She wished she could have cared at least a little about what Jonah had to tell her, at least as much as – to her own surprise – she found out that she was still caring about…_him.

_There was almost an odd, knowing smile on her lips when she finally saw him. At the last moment, though, she let her poker-face slip over her startled features. It was like nothing she had imagined. No _hello, _no _Dylan, _no_ Beka! Thank the Divine you're alive. _Just the sight of him, oddly resplendent in his utter helplessness. No alert stride anymore, no proud captain's stance, no black leather and tight pants. Just him, dragged in, battered, limp, unconscious, just his haggard, bruised face and underneath the closed eye-lids the promise of a soul she knew only too well, tired and blue... Dark-blue. It was most beautiful thing she had ever set eyes upon – the one thing that could fix it all._

_Or so she thought. But then she entered Command and met his furiously accusing eyes, and things were still not fixed. Nothing was. Seeing his pale, angry face. The shadows and the bruises, dry lips and dirty hair. It didn't fix anything. At all. Instead something else happened. A button clicked, a switch flicked, and rage within her flared up, hot and searing, about how none of this was the way she had imagined, about him – after all the past months' heartbreak – not being dead after all, about how they had parted ways, about how they were still so far apart, maybe even on opposite sides, about… About everything, really. The anger was almost blinding, choking her, burning her up from the inside out, but... it also made her start to breathe again. Standing there, staring into dark-blue accusation, she felt enraged – and alive. She could have killed him for that. Seven __months is a long time to be dead._

_So she refused to tell him that she was happy to see him. All she let him know was that her body was breathing again and that her eyes' accusations could match his. They were flat and steely and harsh, and her lips spoke dry words that he couldn't help but hear. And after she said those words –_ You made me feel expendable _– she just stood there and watched as something within him gave way, his eyes crying out to her: _Beka. Are you really refusing to join me again? _And the answer was_ yes, _he knew it and so did she, and for a moment it seemed like he wanted to cry like a child not only because she couldn't, but because she didn't want to. There was no will, and he seemed to know exactly what she felt, his own will cracking with the knowledge – lost in the darkness that knowledge bore. And for that one instant she saw his cool leave him, and felt how he lost it, and how he ceased to want anything anymore: surviving or arguing or living. Anything but to just hit her – or screw her, angry and hating, right where she stood, crushed against the bulkhead, or crumpled underneath him on the deck. Yet more than that and underneath it all, she saw that he wanted to hold her, gently, tenderly, like lovers do, and kiss a swollen bottom lip, and run his fingertips across the shadows underneath her eyes, and tangle himself in her strands. And how he hurt over her refusal to let him do any of that._

_Jonah Draeger was right. From that moment on she never again looked back, she never again spared one single thought for anything else other than finding ways of denying Dylan whatever he might have hoped or wished for, finding ways of punishing Dylan for… It didn't matter. For the fact that she had walked out on him, that he had let her, that he had been lost to her for so long, that he refused to let go of her on Seefra, for stubbornly clinging to her, for the way his gaze constantly lingered on her, full of questions and doubts. Whenever she looked at him, she found him looking at her, his eyes searching for answers, trying to understand – as if he she was someone he didn't know, didn't understand, was wondering about in every respect, even the most simple. Like he wondered whether_ _she was for real, whether it was still blood that flowed in her veins – or rather something else. Sometimes, his eyes implied that it felt like poison to him. Sometimes, liquid bullets._

What could they possibly want from a drunken Nietzschean and the captain of a ship that doesn't function?

Dylan, Dylan, Dylan – are we pretending we're crew again?

_Oh yes, there were times when she felt vindicated. When he was looking like she scared the living daylights out of him. Like when he said_ I get this it's all Dylan's fault-vibe _to her. And she said just something inconclusive and then… nothing. Nothing at all. He had looked scared then, and she had not understood, because she thought that she had given in, while he thought… It had been then that Beka had realized that she no longer knew what he was thinking, not really. And decided to find out again, bit by bit, piece by piece, carefully counting each time that spooked look appeared on his face while looking at her. But it was only during the hours before their last fight with the Spirit of the Abyss that she finally __understood. Walking the corridors with her, after she had agreed to stand by him and fight, after at last she had admitted to him how much she cherished their companionship, seeing his beaming smile at her admission, she finally understood: what had scared him more than anything had been the thought that what poured from her eyes while looking at him would one day no longer be even so much as poison – or liquid bullets, but… nothing. That there was nothing left in her for him. That – as far as he was concerned – she had become empty._

_It had scared her, too – the simple thought that he had even considered such a thing possible, that after all those years, he still needed this kind of reassurance. _

* * *

"I…" Beka began to answer Jonah, but had to stop. Whatever she could have said, it would have sounded lame and insincere. She drew a deep breath, then began anew. "You're right. Back in the day I thought I love you, but… You're right, I didn't mean it, I never truly committed to the deal we made. Not that, once Dylan was back, it would have mattered, had I committed. I don't know if it helps, but… the situation you brought about when you lured me into Musseveni's trap – it caused me just as much pain as I caused you, if not more."

"I thought it would help, but it didn't."

To her amazement, Beka realized that she did believe him. And while that didn't change anything about the shattered past between them, it did give her at least a tiny bit of hope for the future. She stepped closer to him.

"Consider my letting you stay here an attempt to make some amendment for the history we share."

"Will I survive it?" Jonah inquired bluntly. The question caught Beka by surprise.

"What?"

He closed the remaining distance between the two of them quickly, invading her personal space.

"Don't take me for a fool, Beka. You know what I mean…"

She stared into his eyes, then nodded, slowly, at the same time appreciating his perspicacity while acknowledging that he was right.

"I do. And you will survive it. At a price, however."

"What price?"

"A chaperone…"

"A what?"

"Someone to watch over you."

"Who?"

"Trance."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. She's very good at watching over… everything, really: people, situations, places. She can help you. And believe me, Jonah, you will need her helping you along with those new Nietzs you've helped creating."

"She's… a creature with…"

"She's not a 'creature'. If anything, she is more like a… creation. And a rare one, too: a compassionate goddess."

"I kept her prisoner for years."

"Yes. And now she'll help you along to keep this system… well, guarded."

"That wasn't our original deal."

"No. But since I made that deal never intending to keep it to your satisfaction, this new one is a far better bargain, believe me."

"Is it now?"

"Jonah," Beka sounded almost pleading, "you wanted once to be top dog on Seefra. When that didn't come through, you wanted to be top dog somewhere else. I'm offering you a chance to do just that; it's only…"

"It's only that it comes with strings attached: there'll be someone to watch me, while I'm supposed to watch Musseveni's new Nietzs. Top dog? Maybe… But, but top guardian dog – with a shepherd above me I'm supposed to obey."

"The alternative would be to come back with me to our part of the universe. There's gonna be a bumpy ride first to get us there. And once we've made it – if we make it, that is – I'll try to get you off the hook there, but…"

"But you can't guarantee it. And even if you succeed, I'll have a chip on my shoulder for the rest of my life."

"Yep," Beka confirmed dryly. "But it's a choice…" Jonah Draeger looked at her in outrage.

"Some choice!"

"Look at it from the bright side, Jonah: at least I'm not proposing you risk addiction in exchange for your best friend's life. And I'm not trying to force your hand to kill him. All things considered, that's mighty generous of me."


	83. Chapter 82

**Chapter 82**

They were busy with their last check-ups on the _Maru_, the two of them alone in the huge hangar-deck of the Ral-Parthian vessel. From time to time, Beka could feel Rafe's eyes lingering on her, so it did not really surprise her when he spoke up. If anything, it surprised her more that it had taken him that long to voice his objections, of which she knew there had to be many.

"So you're sure that leaving Jonah here is a good idea?"

Her eyes not leaving the panel she was checking, the blonde shrugged.

"Of course I'm not sure, Rafe. That's why Trance offered to stay with him."

"And you think this is a good idea?"

With a small sigh, she stuck the flexi she was holding under her belt and turned around to face her brother.

"Is there something you want me to take under advice?"

The tall, dark man frowned.

"Rommie told... showed me everything about Seefra."

"Rafe, what are trying to tell me?"

"I'm trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings about this whole mess rather than tell _you_ something."

Beka sighed. This was not a promising start.

"Any success on that?"

"Some," her brother ventured. "Jonah has once apparently been in charge of a system – and things don't seem to have gone all that well."

"He wasn't in charge, just very influential. And everything that happened... That was not entirely his fault. He tried to make the best of it, tried to bring at least some order into the chaos reigning on Seefra…"

"According to Rommie, he tried to do this by – among other things –incarcerating Trance and using her to frighten and threaten off all opposition. What makes you think that things will go better this time?" Rafe objected.

"Those were very different circumstances, Rafe," Beka answered, trying to keep her voice as dispassionate as possible. "Trance was extremely weakened by trying to fight the Worldship on her own and tesseracting us all and the _Andromeda_ to Seefra at the same time. Now, she's…"

"At full power?"

Beka had to laugh. "I would have put it somewhat differently, but yes." She threw him a quick, weighing look. "Why are you asking about this? I'd have thought that you wouldn't care what happens on Ral Parthia – as long as it stays on Ral Parthia."

"Well, I was just thinking, and..."

"And you have doubts about both Jonah and Trance. I can relate to that. I have them, too. But…" Beka hesitated.

"But it beats the hell out of a more… permanent solution," her brother concluded the sentence for her. "On the other hand, we're here because you hoped to save Dylan. Right now he still looks far from saving. How do you plan to get him back to our universe alive without the two of them? Or… at least as alive as he is right now?"

The young captain pressed her lips together. Rafe had touched a sore spot. She was well aware that her friend's life was hanging by a thread, that Jonah had several times proven to be the last line of defense between Dylan and his death. She'd given her word though, and not alone to Jonah, _that_ she would not have felt really bound to, not really, not after everything that had occurred between the two of them. But her word to Dylan, the word she'd given him to uphold his ideals, to hold the line when he no longer could, to keep the Commonwealth safe… That word she still felt bound to, to some extent even more than she felt bound to her own need to keep Dylan alive. She blew up her cheeks, slowly letting the air out again in an annoyed – and worried – manner.

"Your argument is old. Harper, Doyle, Rommie, Rhade… they all used it on me already. You're late to the party, Rafe."

"Maybe. But that doesn't make me necessarily dancing to the wrong tune, just 'cos you enjoy changing it."

Beka shook her head.

"Nothing changed, Rafe: I won't save Dylan to the detriment of his Commonwealth."

"Fine. Then how about you take it all one step further and save not just Dylan and the baby you two have created altogether, but also both yourself and your precious Commonwealth some trouble…"

His sister's eyes narrowed.

"Meaning?" she inquired curtly.

"Meaning that you should leave Mommy dearest here, as well."

For a brief moment, Beka's hand on the _Maru_'s panels stilled, but then she resumed her work without responding to her brother's proposal. The short instant of total stillness set aside, nothing indicated that she had even so much as heard his proposal.

"Beka? Did you listen to what I just told you?"

There still was no reply.

"Beka?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" her reply came at long last. Rafe frowned.

"Get it? Get what?"

"You all think that I'm here just because of Dylan. You think that all I do is because of him, too. That he is my only concern and that nothing else matters."

"And that's false?"

Beka let her hands drop and turned around to face her brother.

"You don't understand, Rafe. Dylan gave me friendship, and warmth, and shoulders to load upon some of the responsibilities I had carried all alone for so long. He gave me his trust and his support - and: no matter what I did, whether I excelled at the tasks he gave me or disappointed him bitterly, it always was his unconditioned support. He backed me whenever I decided to disregard my duties, when I time and again risked every asset of his to help whatever shady figure of my past I nurtured some flawed loyalty for – and that includes you. And he even had my back when I walked out on him on the eve of battle. But beyond all of that, Dylan gave me a purpose, a life meaning something to… something beyond myself and the people depending on me. A couple of days ago, I was still thinking that all of that meant nothing without him. But I was wrong. The purpose he gave me… It matters with or without him. Everywhere. And for everyone. This is why I don't use a nova on Ral Parthia. This is why I agree to let Jonah and Trance stay and see what they can accomplish here – since, ironically enough, it was Trance who opened my eyes in the matter. This system is alive, Rafe. It was perverted into something only fit for battle, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve a chance to try and make itself fit for something else. Setting mother loose in all of this… We've seen what kind of havoc she could cause in the Known Worlds, how effective her attempts are to bring down any kind of structure and order still in the making…"

"And knowing all this, you intend to bring her back and let her try again? You opposed her openly, Beka. You defeated her, set her prisoner, killed off a lot of her… assets. She'll be out to get you."

"She'll be too busy standing trial."

"For what, Beka? What would she be accused of?"

"Kidnapping of Commonwealth-officers? Plotting against the Commonwealth? Infiltrating the Collectors' ranks?"

"Really? Jonah was the one who kidnapped you, but you plan to leave him here. Musseveni masterminded all of this. He's dead. And Dylan went to Myrmidon on his own, all alone, out of his free will, to look for you. Later-on, he was shot down in battle. As far as the plotting and infiltrating go: you can't prove anything other than her building one of the Commonwealth's major companies – and all her ties to the Collectors can be explained by the demands of her senatorial position. There is nothing you can pin down on Thalia herself in any of this."

"Well, that's a chance we'll have to take, then…"

"You're crazy."

"To some extent, yes. Very probably. According to Trance, though, it is this craziness of mine that apparently may help to save the day." She sighed, then threw a look around her that was both sad and eager, in a strange, hounded way. "I think we're done and ready for departure, Rafe. Check everything one last time, then report to Command."

With a curt, dry slap on her brother's shoulder, Beka Valentine turned around and left.

* * *

The short, few hours that followed were spent in a blur. She had been strained, stressed and wary after leaving Rafe, desperately trying to compose herself for more arguments and heart-wrenching discussions, with Doyle, and Jonah, and Trance. And her mother. But nothing happened the way she had expected.

Upon her return to Medical, Trance had informed her that Dylan was as stable as he was likely to get at this point. Doyle was done with her tasks – and so was Rafe in due course; and both of them seemed eager to get out of there. Her mother seemed eager to have some more words with her, but for once, the pilot avoided being lured into having to listen to yet another fruitless explanation. She unceremoniously had Doyle toss the older woman in the _Eureka Maru_'s brig. From then on, everything else happened very fast. Or maybe it just seemed so after the slow motion feeling the previous hours had provided them all with.

Within one hour only, the _Maru_ was prepped for launch… Well, as prepped as it could be for what was awaiting them. Rafe was already in the cockpit, Thalia safely stored away and Doyle in Medical with Dylan. At the still opened hangar doors of the Dragan vessel, Trance and Jonah were standing in companionable silence. Rebekkah Valentine had already one foot set on the cat-walk leading up to the _Maru_'s doors, when she hesitated. There was nothing more to say, though; nothing more to be done, either. Except… She swirled around and ran back to Trance.

"Is this the future you came back from?" she spurted out as soon as Trance could hear her.

The golden girl's dark eyes widened.

"What?"

"You heard me," Beka stated in a flat tone.

"I don't…"

"Don't play around, Trance. Not now. Not anymore. You know what I'm asking. So answer me, dammit."

Tarn-Vedra's avatar hesitated briefly, but then she sighed.

"No, Beka."

"So none of this everyhappened the first time around?"

"Some happened, but not like this. None of it ever happened exactly the way it panned out this time. At none of… the first times around."

A disconcerted look appeared on the blonde's face.

"The first times?" she echoed. "You played it out more than once?"

"I always play it out more than once. All of it. This is no different. The point we're at right now, though… We've never reached it like this. Some things were missing one way or the other. And… there was one thing that was always missing."

"What?"

"Dylan. He's never before made it so far."

Slowly, like there were weights attached to her neck, Beka nodded.

"So… So this is really why you – back in the day – told me that I had to learn about gambits, yes? Because you thought that, whatever happens, I'd have to learn to give up on Dylan?"

As Trance's eyes welled up, Jonah Draeger snorted lightly and intervened.

"You still may have to learn to give up on Dylan. But… I don't know… I'm not even pretending to understand much about any of… whatever it is you two are talking about, but… Those 'previous scenarios'…" He eyed Trance suspiciously. "You can tell the future? Determine it?"

Trance shook her head.

"No, neither one nor the other. I can only… foresee possibilities. Many possibilities." She interrupted herself, and her face went slack – and immobile, as if something had just occurred to her only now.

"Trance?" Beka inquired softly. A smile split up the avatar's face and she turned around to face her old friend again.

"Actually, Beka, it just occurred to me that there were two things missing: Dylan making it through so far and… Jonah."

The blonde took the information in impassibly. For a few seconds, she just mustered her friend in silence, but then one of the famed grins slowly began to tuck at the corners of her lips.

"Really?" she ventured at last. "Ah…" The grin broke through, full force. "Who knows, Trance? Who knows?" And for the first time in what seemed like years, a laugh, a true, real laugh escaped Beka. "So: no cyborg this time?"

"Probably not."

"Good…"

"Oh, I don't know," Trance offered, her too sounding again – in a long time playful, "you were a sexy one, you know…"

"Still," Beka joined in the playfulness, "since Dylan's still around, I guess it's better this way. As far as I remember, I think he hates cyborgs…"

"Yes, but he loves sexy…"

"Well, first things first. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Yes, or double-cross it, as Harper always says."

Mentioning the name made both of them get serious again.

"Anything I should tell him, Trance?"

The golden girl pressed her lips together, then shook her head. But then she seemed to reconsider.

"Tell him… Just tell him that sometimes... there _are_ flowers…"* She smiled upon seeing Beka's confusion. "Don't worry, he'll understand."

Beka nodded. She turned slightly to the right facing Jonah Draeger an held out her hand. With only a slight hesitation, he took it.

"Thank you," the woman told him.

"For Dylan?" he wanted to know.

"No. For teaching me a few lessons."

"Like what?"

"Like how it is sometimes better to leave a living enemy behind."

"We weren't always enemies. It didn't have to be that way. "

"Oh yes, it did, Jonah. You're right. We weren't always enemies, but we never were friends, either."

"And now we never will be."

"No. But now it's probable that, given a chance, we may have become friends."

He had to laugh at that.

"Some tragedy, eh?" he snorted.

Beka smiled back at him.

"Story of my life," she agreed.

"Well, it doesn't have to," Trance interrupted, stepping closer to her former captain, placing both hands on her shoulders and squeezing lightly. After which she determinedly turned the other woman around. "So off you go, Beka. Go. Do something about it."

The blonde's shoulders straightened and she seemed to grow taller. She began walking away, slowly at first, but gaining speed with each step. It was only at the doors of her ship, that she threw back one more look at the two meanwhile distant figures. She raised her hand in one last greeting, and then she stepped through the doors that shut silently behind her. For an instant, Beka just remained standing behind the closed doors, as if trying to determine where to go from there on. And then she directed herself towards Medical.

* * *

Doyle looked up only briefly when her captain came in.

"Are we done here?" she wanted to know.

Beka nodded, not bothering to answer, her eyes glued to Dylan's outstretched figure. She stepped closer to the biobed and placed a hand on his head, her fingers curling into his hair. She bowed down to his ear, careful to not touch any of the devices attached to him.

"Hang in there, you hear me? Hang in there, Dylan. Because you see, it very well may be that you were right once more. Maybe... just maybe... I really _do_ know how to pick them, after all."**

She straightened up again.

"Rafe?"

"Hey, Rocket…"

"'Aye, Captain' would be the correct answer," Doyle cut in with a frown.

Beka grinned.

"Leave it be, Doyle. We Valentines just don't do 'ayes' and 'captains'. Rafe, prep for launch. I'll be with you in a minute."

A/N: * Reference to a dialogue between Harper and Trance from TRH:

Harper: How do they mate? How do they date? I mean, come on, love is just a bunch of exaggerations and lies, all dolled up in pseudo-poetic language, uttered preferably while intoxicated, and all for the singular, universal purpose of... uh, you know.  
Trance**: **Harper, you're a born romantic.  
Harper: Sometimes there are flowers.

** Reference to a dialogue between Dylan and Beka from PBtF:

Dylan: Mrs. Drago Musseveni.  
Beka: Don't start. I know. I really know how to pick'em.  
Dylan: Hey, you've picked me, didn't you?


	84. Chapter 83

**Chapter 83**

The ill-fated trip to Tarn-Vera, all those years and years ago… It had been a walk in the park.

After sneaking away undetected from the Nietzschean vessel, Beka was relieved when they reached a position fit for trying to open a slipstream portal. Of course, she should have known that her enthusiasm had been premature.

The coordinates for their first ride programmed, she found the _Maru _repelled by some sort of gravitational wave that shook the old vessel to the core and pushed it almost all the way back to the center of the Ral system. At which point, of course, hell broke loose, for after an event of such magnitude and with everyone on high alert because of the collapse of the wormhole, there was no way for them to remain undetected.

With Doyle at the weapons' console firing everything they had available at the Nietzscheans hot on their trail, the ship shaking and groaning around them at every hit as if she were on the verge of breaking apart the next instant and Rafe's panicked voice shouting over the com-link that life support was starting to collapse in medical, Beka headed again as fast as she could for a position suited for opening a slipstream portal. This time though she no longer took her time adjusting navigation and considering all finer points of consummate excellence at piloting the slipstream. The portal opening and the _Maru_ plunging ahead through it happened almost instantaneously. Miraculously – and much against the captain's expectations – it worked this time. But what followed next let Beka wonder if facing once more Ral Parthia's entire Dragan wrath and taking some more time to prepare before diving into the portal would not have been the better choice of action.

She'd been before through stream mazes and slip routes that were nothing short of some sort of enormous thorny paths through time and space. She'd flown courses that were everything from bumpy to rough to dramatic to "we're all gonna die within the next fraction of a second". She'd done it with Nietzschean fighters, Magog swarm ships and huge battle cruisers hot on her heels and taking shots at the ships she was flying. She'd flown into several tesseraciting portals, _Routes of Ages_ - as the Vedrans called them, through mysterious tunnels serving as connections to universes unknown, through wormholes and labyrinths no-one else had previously survived. She had even done it once while trying to fend off an enraged Tyr Anasazi at the same time. And yet, nothing she had ever experienced had prepared her for what was happening to them now.

It seemed as if the _Eureka Maru _was pushing forward through a much too narrow corridor that kept closing in on her – at high velocity. It was not a flight, more likely something akin to a dive, a plunge into a tiny passage that was continuously collapsing on itself. The twists and turns one normally had to anticipate in slipstream were practically non-existent, seemed more like minimal shifts in the fabric of the whole improbable structure they were passing through. The old freighter was screeching furiously, like some ancient wagon forcing its way through a metal tube too small for its size, while its inner life protested with sparkles and explosions that kept pushing the vessel even more against some huge mass pressuring it from the outside.

With gritted teeth, her fists clenched desperately around the steer control in an iron grip that – had she had the time to think about it – Beka would have expected to never become loose again, the _Maru_'s captain was concentrating on keeping the ship on course, trusting Doyle behind her to be able to keep her together while she was trying to get them out of there. Unbeknownst to herself, Beka was hoarsely shouting: orders at Doyle, questions at Rafe, curses at the hell around them, more or less unaware that Doyle was shouting back, just like Rafe did.

And then, all of a sudden, a blinding light accompanied by a giant push shove them from behind – and the nightmare was over, only to be replaced by… another nightmare. One of a different kind, one like nothing Beka had ever experienced before, the unbearable noise from just moments before gone, taken over, swallowed by complete, deafening silence as the _Maru_'s furious protests ended. Wherever they were, around them was just absolute… nothing, a void without light, sound… or anything at all. Beka could see nothing through the cockpit's windows, Doyle's sensors picked up nothing – and even the sounds of the _Eureka Maru _herself or the woman's own breathing seemed gone. Had it not been for her heart beating at a rate that kept pushing it against Beka's ribcage in an almost painful manner, the woman would have thought them all dead already and buried in a hole in which nothing existed, not even time.

"Where…?" The question died in her throat, as her voice came out a raspy croak. She cleared her throat, but before she could restart her sentence, Doyle cut in – in a strange tone. A glance over her shoulder, showed Beka that the avatar was at least as freaked out as she felt.

"I… don't know where we are," the Seefrane told her. "I… don't know…" Her fingers ran over the consoles in front of her at high speed, again and again. Then she shook her head. "I don't know anything, Beka."

The woman's eyes widened. Doyle. Strong, cool, dispassionate Doyle. Sounding lost, pleading, almost begging. She once more forcefully cleared her throat.

"It's okay, Doyle. Get to engineering and check out if it's all still holding up."

"I'm on it."

"Rafe?"

There was some static, but then her brother's voice came in before Beka Valentine could begin to worry.

"Rocket? Are you out of your mind?"

"Sorry. I know it was a rough ride, but I couldn't help it. How's Dylan?"

"Alive. For now, at least, although I can't guarantee what will happen to him if there's more of what we just went through ahead. The stitches on his leg opened and he started bleeding again. I've stopped it, but… I think he's plunging deeper into a coma. And he's cold, Beks. Shock, I suppose, but what the hell do I know?"

"Get him warmed up. I'll send Doyle to help you as soon as she's checked the engines. Make sure he can hold on for a little bit longer."

"He needs a break, Beka."

"We all do, but I don't know where we are. I have no readings, other than the coordinates already programmed by Harper and Trance with the slipstream-scout no clue whatsoever on how to proceed. We can't afford to spend too much time here. Doyle, how's things?"

"Everything looks fine, but…"

"That'll have to do. Get yourself to Medical, Doyle. The others, hold on to something. We're out of here again on the spot. Pray that all of Harper's programming is right."

"Beka, no! You need to rest a bit, you can't…"

She never got to finish her sentence as Beka's opening of another slip-portal intervened. The absolute silence was torn by the strangest sound imaginable, something like a tearing roar, if a thing like that could have been fathomed, as right in front of them a gap – tiny and straight and nothing like any slip-point any of them had ever seen – ripped open the blackness surrounding them.

"Okay, people! Get ready for another round of some 'shake, rattle and roll'!" the pilot yelled. _I'm losing my mind_, she thought for a brief moment. _Just listen to me, I'm starting to sound like Harper. _She closed her eyes._ Stop thinking, Beka. Stop. Just focus. Focus, dammit! _Without further hesitation, Beka plunged ahead, the _Maru _around them once more protesting vehemently against it.

* * *

The com cracked.

"Beka?"

Rafe. Panicked.

"Beka?"

Closer. Somehow… live…

"Beka!"

Doyle. Next to her ear. And strident. Not a good sound for her. Someone was nestling with her safety belt. Who…? Oh, yes… Doyle.

"D…" The rest of the name drowned in a bone-racking cough.

"Shh… Easy…"

She felt annoyed. And sore. More sore than annoyed, though. Which annoyed her even more. She had to open her eyes! No easy task, but she just had to do it. Instead she tried moistening her lips.

"D…Doy…"

Better. Not perfect, though.

"Yes, it's me, Beka. Come on, open your eyes."

Hearing the commanding tone helped with the leaden eyelids. They cracked open.

"Good! Atta girl! Come on, Beka, focus! No, no, no… Don't close your eyes again!"

The imperious tone matched the violent shaking of her shoulders that reverberated into a most unwelcome attempt to crack up her cranial bones. How the heck was she supposed to focus, shaken like that? Besides: focus on what? Her eyes flew open once more.

"Doyle!"

"Yep, that would be me."

A pretty, cat-like face swam into her vision camp, the expression it bore somewhere in the middle between relief and frowning.

"What happened?"

"You… well, I suppose you flew us through one more hellish passage…"

"We… we all made it…?" Beka asked hesitatingly. Doyle heard her.

"We did," she nodded to her reassuringly. "He's with us, Beka…" _Still_… The pilot swallowed dryly.

"Rafe's got a bump on his head – and your mother's freaked out, but other than that…"

"What about you? How are you?"

"Me as in me – or the _Maru_?"

The captain had to smile, as one of her hands came up and swiped at her lips. She shrugged.

"Both, I guess."

"Me, I'm fine. The _Maru_… Well, not happy, but not as bad as we'll be in a short time if you don't get a grip and… start talking."

"Talking?" Beka frowned. "Talking to whom?"

"Well, captain, I don't mean to upset you, but you've brought us to someplace I can't identify…"

"Surprise…" the woman muttered ironically, but the android refused to let herself be interrupted.

"…which is however the least of our problems, since wherever we are, there are half a dozen Glorious Heritage class-vessels surrounding us at present, refusing to answer any of my calls."

"What?"

She pressed open the seat belts cutting into her ribcage and lifted an arm to push Doyle aside, for a better view of the control panels and monitors. Indeed, there they were, just as her avatar had informed her: six Glorious Heritage ships, all of them very similar to the _Andromeda_, but not quite like her. The sensors indicated that there were differences, some vessels seemed more sophisticated than the "Path to Truth and Knowledge", while others appeared more like predecessors. Beka's eyes darted back and forth between the monitors and the view outside the Maru's windscreens showing far away the silhouettes of two of the said ships glowing a slight bronze in the discreet light of some sun the woman couldn't see. For an instant, Beka let herself drop back into the seat. She closed her eyes and frowned. To Doyle it looked almost as if she was readjusting, recalibrating her thoughts, memories… or suspicions, struggling for answers – and for a decision. If she was, it took her not all too long to reach it.

"Doyle, open a channel!"

"Com channel is open, Beka."

"Thanks. This is Captain Rebekkah B. Valentine of the _Andromeda Ascendant_ on Commonwealth freighter _Eureka Maru_. Please respond."

At first there was but silence and the monitors remained dark. But then a cool, crisp voice answered.

"Captain Valentine, welcome. This is the imperial flag ship _Restoration_. We suggest you let us pull you in, so that we might finally come to meet each other in person."

"**Imperial **flag ship _Restoration_? I hope you don't mind my asking, but… exactly which empire am I talking to right now?"

At last the monitor flickered and came to life. Seeing it, the pilot briefly pressed her lips together, then relaxed them into a slightly bitter smile.

"Ah," she uttered dryly. "**That **empire… Oh, well. What is it they say? In life you always meet twice." Next to her, Doyle was staring aghast at the screen. Upon noticing it, Beka's grin widened. _Oh, you really are Harper's girl,_ she thought. _Judging from what Trance told me, he had the same reaction._"However, about your proposal. I'm afraid that we have to postpone that meeting. We're just passing through – and have urgent business elsewhere."

"That's too bad," her interlocutor replied. "I fear we must insist."

"Why?"

"You have things onboard that belong to us."

Beka's eyes narrowed to tiny, vicious slits.

"With… 'things' you wouldn't be by any chance referring to my mother and my captain?"

"Your mother is one of us. And your captain is technically still under my command."

"Oh, I don't think so. I'm not so familiar with my mother's background to be able to judge whether or not your statement about her is true. Dylan, however, is another matter. He was a High Guard captain: centuries ago one of the Old Commonwealth. And later he became one of the Restored New Systems' Commonwealth. But as far as I know, Dylan never served under an empire, and he is not likely to start any time soon. Onboard **my** ship, **my** mother is a prisoner, and Dylan in no shape to make any decisions. Regardless, they're both their own persons, not things to be claimed or disposed of."

"You don't understand…"

"You're right, I don't understand. So by all means, pray enlighten me, Admiral Uxulta."


End file.
